Rumor has it that the tiny shopping center just north of Wolfram Research World HQ is going to be demolished: replacing the roof (which was damaged by thunderstorms in April) would cost more money than the owner cares to spend.
It's a shabby, ugly old building. I won't miss it.
It's also mostly vacant: the car rental place moved out some time ago; the shoe store (Andy's Shoes) moved to 1207 S. Mattis Ave. two weeks ago. But the scuba-gear store (aka Mrs. Cuba) is still there, so far as I know.
Loud thunder just now. Radar shows a small but intense storm cell, right over Champaign: five miles in any direction, the radar is clear.
At least I remembered to bring my umbrella to work today.
MSNBC says:
Targeting a top gripe by cell phone users and breaking ranks again with its industry, Verizon Wireless plans to prorate the fee it charges subscribers who break a contract so they only pay an amount proportional to the time left on their agreements.
In other words, Verizon will continue to [censored] their customers, just not quite so painfully as the other cell phone companies.
Nice try, Verizon.
Tonight was my turn to take Jake to his swimming lessons; to amuse myself, I brought along the camera. I put it on Jake's towel, down at the end of the chair (one of those long foldy chairs that are nearly impossible to get into or out of), pointed it at the corner of the pool where Jake's class was, and programmed it to take a picture every thirty seconds.
So now I have eighty-five pictures of tonight's class. None of them is very good as far as composition goes (a few aren't even in focus), but it's amusing to scroll quickly through them in iPhoto and watch people in the background jump around.
I saw a DeLorean today, pulling out of the bank parking lot at Prospect & Kirby.
I used to think DeLoreans were extinct - if that's the right word to use for a car - but it turns out they aren't: the DeLorean Motor Company, down in Texas, is single-handedly keeping the model alive. A refurbished DeLorean can be yours for only $42,500.
I think we'd have to win a really big Lotto jackpot before I'd consider spending that much money on a car that's twenty-five years old.
They have a web site: http://www.delorean.com/. (No, it's not the original DeLorean Motor Company. That went under a long time ago: 1982, according to Wikipedia.)
NASA plans to launch Discovery on July 1. They haven't fixed the insulation-shedding problem that caused the loss of Columbia in 2003, but they're launching anyway.
"It's perfectly safe," the bureaucrats say. "If Discovery is damaged during liftoff, the crew can take refuge in the space station until a rescue mission can be sent up to retrieve them."
And the rescue mission will be - you guessed it - another shuttle.
That seems a bit...um...how can I phrase this diplomatically...incredibly stupid. What if the rescue mission itself ends up too damaged to land?
'Rocket scientist' used to mean 'really smart'....
So: I dock my iPod, it synchronizes with iTunes, life is good. I leave it docked so it will charge up for tomorrow.
The iMac is configured to drop into sleep mode after a certain period of inactivity (an hour, I think): saves power, saves wear & tear on moving parts, etc. All in all, a good idea.
But when the iMac wakes up again, iTunes and the iPod won't talk to each other. To get synchronization working again, I have to eject the iPod, undock it, close & restart iTunes, then re-dock the iPod.
This sort of song & dance oughtn't be necessary on a Mac, n'est-ce pas?
This evening's discovery: thumb drives have the same problem. But I can't eject the thing, because dragging the disk icon just gets me the Swirly Wheel of Death and the icon doesn't move.
At least Safari is still working, so I can rant in the daybook.
Update: I had to reboot the iMac to get my thumb drive back. And it seems I'm not the only one with this problem: the OS X discussion forums have numerous grumbles from unhappy customers (here, here and here).
I guess I'll just have to remember to eject the thing before walking away from the iMac.
I finally caved in & bought a 1GB SanDisk Cruzer thumb drive: the prices were so low I couldn't resist. And I can think of a few reasonable uses for 1GB of portable storage.
But a curious thing happened when I plugged it into the iMac: OS X thought it was a blank CD-R, and asked me what I wanted to do with it. Um...it's a thumb drive, not a CD-R, you silly computer.
Turns out I should have read the fine print on the box: pre-installed on my thumbdrive was a copy of U3 LaunchPad. U3 describes LaunchPad thusly:
Imagine carrying your favorite software, preferences, profiles and data on a device no bigger than a pack of gum. With a U3 smart drive, you can plug into any Windows XP or 2000 PC and be productive wherever you are.
My description isn't so flattering: U3 LaunchPad is useless crapware that just gets in my way. What makes it evil useless crapware is that reformatting the thumbdrive doesn't remove it.
But there's a happy ending to this story: apparently there were enough complaints that the spuds at U3 (reluctantly) provided an uninstall utility. A comment on the Ars Technica discussion forums summed it up nicely:
Hear that? That's the sound of someone's business model crashing and burning.
Just so. I bought the thumbdrive so I could keep my own files on it, not because I wanted U3 to monkey about with my computer. Enjoy bankruptcy, you morons.
Sam's eye wasn't getting any better, despite the eyedrops we've been dosing him with, so today he went back to the doctor (not his regular doctor; a different one).
The new doctor says it's still pinkeye, but it's viral pinkeye. Apparently this isn't any nastier than the bacterial kind, but - being viral - antibiotics don't help.
"Keep it clean, wait for it to get better on its own," was the doctor's advice.
Poor Sam. He looks like somebody slugged him. He's still cheerful & feisty, though.
Got caught in two cloudbursts yesterday afternoon:
The first was around 2:00pm, when we were all in West Side Park for the Taste of Champaign (donuts from Curtis Orchard...yummy...). Jake was having a grand old time in the inflatable bouncy houses when little sprinkles of rain started falling. Time to go home, we thought, but the car was far enough away that everybody was quite soaked before we were all safely inside.
Sam doesn't like getting rained on. No, not at all.
The second time was around 6:00pm, as I was coming home from the grocery store. I managed to get all the bags into the car before the rain really got started; but carrying them into the house took enough trips that I was quite soaked afterward. (Half an hour later, the rain had stopped again. Go figure.)
MSNBC says:
Having several older brothers increases the likelihood of a man being gay, a finding researchers say adds weight to the idea that there is a biological basis for sexual orientation.
I only have one older brother, so perhaps I'm only slightly gay. (Won't Jennifer be surprised....)
Seven years ago today, Jennifer & I were married.
Happy anniversary, my love.
Health update:
This has been a cybernetic datum generated in the public interest.
I sure have been grumpy lately. I haven't been as polite to my cow-orkers as they deserve.
Maybe I should cut back a little on the caffeinated beverages....
Included on the invoice for Mr. Explorer's last oil change - and repeated on the invoice for the idler pulley replacement - was a list of recommended maintenance:
The curious phrasing made me cackle a bit: are they going to take the transmission fluid out of somebody else's car & pump it into Mr. Explorer? So did the Logan's Run references: renew! renew! The bill, however, was nothing to cackle about: these rejuvenation treatments are going to cost about $400.
I'm not really looking forward to spending so much money, but I suppose the alternative (a new car) would be even more expensive....
Deep within the foliage of barrel #1, there is a single marble-sized green tomato. None yet on barrel #2, but I'm optimistic.
No sign of Japanese beetles this evening, either.
Last night I saw three Japanese beetles munching away on my basil plant.
I dosed everything with anti-beetle-juice (what happens if you say that three times?) left over from last year; maybe this will encourage the bugs to dine elsewhere.
Poor Sam, another case of pinkeye. Mr. Doctor prescribed some eyedrops (which Sam doesn't seem to mind quite so much this time as he used to).
It hasn't slowed him down any, though. He's as feisty as ever.
Still nobody at the DNA Lounge, according to the webcam. But there is a motorcycle:
The DNA Lounge: two thousand miles away, and still entertaining....
Subversion runs nicely on OS X, but - alas! - TortoiseSVN does not. I don't actually know how to use svn (the Subversion command-line client), so I've been struggling a bit.
ZigVersion to the rescue:
ZigVersion is a Version Control interface for Mac developers that works with Subversion servers. Instead of simply reproducing the command line concepts as a graphical interface, we looked at the typical workflows of professional programmers and designed an interface around them.
If it weren't beta software - the current release is beta five, which is particularly troubling - I might give it a try.
(There's also svnX, but I don't think it's completely baked, either: the latest version is 0.9.7.)
I noticed last night that iTunes has an album from the Nails: Corpus Christi. I thought I might buy it, but one of the customer reviews said all of the songs from Corpus Christi were available for free from the band's web site.
So I clicked on over to http://www.the-nails.com/ and read this:
DO NOT PAY AND DOWNLOAD NAILS' SONGS FROM iTUNES MUSIC STORE. THEY ARE FROM SAFE HOUSE (PURVEYORS OF RIPPING OFF CORPUS CHRISTI). THE NAILS WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY COMPENSATION.
THERE ARE FREE DOWNLOADS OF ALL CORPUS CHRISTI SONGS (EVEN UNRELEASED SONGS) ON GEORGE'S WEBSITE. THANKS!
Hm...on the one hand, downloading free music feels a little bit like stealing. On the other, if I bought Corpus Christi from iTunes the Nails wouldn't get any money. So the band gets screwed either way.
What to do, what to do....
Sam's two favorite hand gestures: pointing and waving.
If you wave at him, sometimes he'll wave back. It's very cute.
(He also keeps trying to stick his fingers up my nose. So far, I have managed to prevent this.)
Jake had his first swimming lesson today.
I couldn't tell if they were actually teaching the kids anything, or just getting them used to being in the pool, but Jake certainly had a good time.
(Memo to self: next time, bring water. And a book.)
Corn: the corn plants disappeared a few days ago, presumably eaten by rabbits. The seeds never sprouted; there are signs that rabbits - or something - dug them up and ate them, too.
Basil: happy enough. It's taller than it is wide, and getting rather spindly, but it's green and growing. I wonder when we can start harvesting leaves from it. (Probably not for another month or two.)
Hot peppers: not dead yet, but definitely scrawny-looking. (I've never grown hot peppers before, so maybe they're supposed to look like that?)
Tomatoes: very happy. The big success of the year, so far. Curiously, the plant in barrel #1 is considerably larger than the plant in barrel #2. They started out the same size, and I put the same dirt in both barrels, so the difference is a mystery. The only explanation I can come up with is that it was raining when Jake & I set up barrel #2: the topsoil was waterlogged and compacted, so I didn't get to mix the sand in as thoroughly as in barrel #1.
Both plants have a few tiny yellow flowers on them. If I can keep the bugs away, we might get some tomatoes this year.
Way back in 2002, Microsoft announced SPOT, a (somewhat contrived) acronym for Smart Personal Objects Technology. The idea was that computers were too big & bulky to carry around all the time, so what people really needed was...an internet-enabled wristwatch.
I was sure SPOT had long since died a quiet death from customer indifference (and Microsoft neglect), but - surprise! - it's still out there: http://direct.msn.com/.
(No, I don't want one. SPOT watches are a pretty stupid idea, especially when compared to the average cell phone.)
A small storm cloud is streaming in from the northwest. It's quite narrow, too: looking out my office window, I can see blue sky to the north and to the west.
It looks like Mahomet is getting rain, though.
There's nothing on the radar. Mysterious.
It was thirteen years ago today - Friday, June 18th, 1993 - that Jennifer & I first met: a lunch date at Treno's, on Goodwin Avenue in Urbana.
Happy anniversary, my love.
(How she has managed to tolerate me all these years is an enduring mystery.)
Microsoft Access, the database I've been using since version 2.0, isn't available for OS X, even though the rest of Office is. So I need an alternative.
MySQL is free (at least, the Community Edition is free), so I installed that on mork this evening. It works nicely, though its user interface (all command-line, all the time) is a bit retro.
Now I just need to migrate my databases (all eight of them). Access has a table-export function, but it doesn't work very well: it will generate csv text files, but isn't bright enough to escape any quotation marks that appear in text fields. I suppose I should have exported everything as fixed-width fields. Oops.
I had the idea that exporting the tables manually would be too much work, so I tried instead to write some VBScript that would do it for me. Access 2000 has an automation interface, but it's completely useless; there's also ADO, but that's such a train wreck that I gave up after an hour and just exported everything by hand. It took less time than untangling ADO would have taken.
People might grumble about, say, PHP's interface to MySQL, but it has advantages: first, it may be ugly, but it works; second, it can be learned in small pieces; third, its developers don't replace it every [censored] year with an all-new, completely incompatible API in some mad, hopeless pursuit of the Ultimate Data-Access API.
It's been a nice Father's Day. When I woke up this morning, a Scooby-Doo bag full of presents was waiting for me: some fancy tea from Art Mart, a book (Sahara by Michael Palin), a nifty picture frame thingy (and some pictures to put in it), and a fish card signed by Jennifer, Jake & Sam. (I think Sam had help.)
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The Marshall Space Flight Center (in Huntsville, Alabama) has a brief biography of Wernher von Braun on its web site.
Dr. von Braun died on June 16, 1977 - exactly twenty-nine years ago.
(Exactly two months later - August 16, 1977 - Elvis died. Coincidence? Or something more...sinister?)
Let's see now...a 1kg can of formula costs about $30. So, practicing a little of the dimensional analysis Mr. Bowles tried so hard to teach me in high school chemistry class:
30$/can × (1 can ÷ 1078g) × (34g ÷ 8oz) × 32 oz/day = $3.78/day
But come August, Sam will switch to whole milk, which costs $3/gallon (more or less), which works out to:
$3/gallon × (1 gallon ÷ 128oz) × 32oz/day = 75¢/day
So that'll be an extra $90/month into the operating fund once Sam hits his first birthday. How nice.
Robert Scoble quits Microsoft, joins PodTech.net, media storm erupts: MSNBC and the BBC run stories (CNN does not); PodTech's servers crash from the surge in traffic as people check out Scoble's new employer.
As when Jamie Zawinski resigned from (as he put it) the Netscape division of America Online (way back in 1999), I have the gloomy suspicion that were I to leave Wolfram Research for new employment, not only would it fail to make the news but few - if any - of my former cow-orkers would even notice my absence.
"Say...there isn't nearly as much whinging around here as there used to be. I wonder what happened...."
The obituary for my great-great-grandfather Jacob Maurer mentions that he had a sister:
A sister, Mrs. Anna Ziegler, of Denver, Colorado, also survives.
I thought I'd see whether I could find her.
The 1930 census for Denver lists an Anna Ziegler, living with her daughter Rose & son-in-law Thomas Stirling. That might be her: the age is reasonable (79), her birthplace is listed as Illinois, and her parents' birthplaces are listed as Germany.
The 1920 census for Denver lists Anna, her husband William Ziegler, and daughters Kate and Rose. (This time, her birthplace is listed as Germany.)
In 1910, the Zieglers were living in Boulder; in between Kate and Rose is a son, Walter.
In 1900, the Zieglers were living in Wayne County, Illinois (just north of White County, aka the Ancestral Home), and there are more children listed: William, Emma, Kate, Anna, Walter and Rose (this time spelled 'Rosa').
So maybe it's her. Investigation continues.
Connected the camcorder to the iMac just now, and managed to import a few minutes of video into iMovie. I had the notion to put together a tiny movie, like the ones I did of Jake when he was a baby; alas, I was defeated by software.
All I want to do is:
Steps 1 & 2 went well enough, but step 3 managed to erase half of my video. Maybe I need to read the iMovie manual, then try again.
Sorry, grandmas.
Jacob seems to have picked up some germs: he wouldn't eat his dinner, and he's running a temperature somewhere above 100°. Poor guy.
Maybe he'll feel better in the morning. If not, time to call Mr. Doctor.
The WRI company picnic was this evening, at Hardy's Reindeer Ranch (near Rantoul). Nice weather for it: not too hot, nice breeze, no rain.
After last year's disappointment (the advertised kid activities all began promptly at 4:00pm, and were over by 4:30pm; we arrived at 5:00pm, just in time to watch them pack it all up), we made a point of getting there early.
This year's picnic had a circus theme, so there was a midway with games. Everything cost a few tickets, just like at a real circus midway; but the tickets were free. Jake played the squirt-gun game ("Hey, Jake, shoot at the cans, not at the roof of the tent!"), the bowling game, and probably a few more I've forgotten.
He also had fun in the inflatable bouncy houses, and just about dunked himself in the horse trough.
We left around 6:00pm, had dinner in Rantoul, drove past the airplane museum (alas, closed), then came home.
http://www.trafficcalming.org/:
This site serves as a practical guide to traffic calming and neighborhood traffic management, including:
- International and US history
- A toolbox of calming devices
- Measured results from traffic calming
- Current programs around the world
I would not describe large concrete obstacles sitting in the middle of the road as 'calming'. Quite the opposite, I'd say.
Yesterday, it was a kitten with rabies; today, MSNBC says:
ST. PETERS, Mo. - A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.
One imagines the producers of Cops making frantic phone calls: "We have a camera crew in St. Peters, right? Did they get any good video?"
Having rejected GnuCash as typical unported (unportable) gnu crapware, I thought I'd take another look at Moneydance.
Moneydance is a Java application, and didn't run so well on nessus when I tried it a few years back. But OS X has much better Java support than Windows, and mork is much faster than nessus, so there was hope.
Installation was trivial: drag the package into the Applications folder. (GnuCash spuds, take note.) It runs nicely, seems to do most everything I might want - but the documentation is seriously out of date, which would make learning how to use the software rather difficult.
In the end, I decided to wait for Quicken 2007. If it's as nasty as Quicken 2006, Moneydance will get another hearing. (Perhaps by then they will have updated the documentation.)
Uninstalling Moneydance was likewise trivial: drag the package to the Trash.
Poked around the GnuCash web site today, to see whether GnuCash might be more featureful than Quicken (the Mac version of which is the neglected stepchild of the Quicken family).
Unfortunately, the OS X installation instructions were rather discouraging:
Years ago, I grumbled that porting the typical unix application consisted mainly of emulating unix on the target platform so closely that the application can't tell it's been ported. It appears that nothing has changed.
So sorry, GnuCash developers. Come back when you have a real OS X application.
MSNBC says:
PetSmart Inc. has suspended animal adoptions at 22 of its pet supply stores in Maryland and Virginia after a kitten tested positive for rabies.
Hm...Jake & I visit the local PetSmart now and then, to say hello to the kitties. We may have to reconsider.
(MSNBC also says it's only the second case of rabies out of three million animals over the last seventeen years. So maybe there's isn't so much to worry about after all.)
The Carmi Times says:
Carmi Chief of Police Mike Thomas reported an incident that occurred Sunday night resulted in the forced shooting of a local man's Rottweiller dog.
According to the incident report. local authorities responded to a report of a viscous dog at 518 Illinois St., around 6 p.m. Sunday.
Two items of note in this report:
CNN says that Meat Loaf is suing his former friend & songwriting partner, Jim Steinman:
Attorney Skip Miller said the suit, filed Monday in Federal Court in Los Angeles, charges that songwriter Jim Steinman unfairly filed for a patent for the phrase in 1995, even though the singer had used it extensively since the first "Bat Out of Hell" album was released in 1977.
Jim Steinman filed for a patent on "bat out of hell"? This must be a bit of lawyers' jargon that I haven't heard until now. (Otherwise, Mr. Steinman's patent has some serious prior-art vulnerabilities.)
There's a crane outside Wolfram Research World HQ, lifting some large piece of machinery up to an open sixth-floor window.
Presumably this is related to the new generator pad in the parking area underneath the north wing. (On which there is still no generator.)
At the grocery store yesterday, I noticed some disturbing items in the freezer section: long, narrow pieces of meat, shrink-wrapped on styrofoam trays.
Beef tongues, thought I. Some people will eat anything. Euww.
Upon closer examination, I discovered that mystery meat objects weren't beef tongue after all. They were...rabbits. Imported Chinese rabbits, according to the label. (What, there are no rabbits in Illinois, they have to ship them in from China?)
Seems like the sort of thing you should get a free rabbit's foot in every package, but I didn't see any.
A recent conversation:
Papa: Jake, who built the Pyramids?
Jake: Elvis!
Mama (outraged): What are you teaching our child?
I guess Jake & I have been listening to Elvis is Everywhere a little too much lately....
I discovered two things this evening about my Virgin Mobile phone:
Now, if the camera in my phone actually worked, and I could send reasonable-quality pictures from my phone directly to the daybook, that would be pretty cool. Alas, Movable Type doesn't have a post-by-email function (which is the only thing I miss about WordPress).
(There are phones available that are stuffed to the gills with geektoys. They all cost hundreds of dollars, plus another $1000/year or so for the service contract. Sorry, telecoms. Come back when your business plan doesn't involve ripping off your customers.)
It occurred to me today that when I set up my various email accounts on the iMac - almost three months ago - I neglected to set up the SBC DSL email account.
I just added it; Mail trundled a bit, downloaded three messages from SBC - and dropped them all in the Junk Mail folder. It's hard to disagree: they were all advertisements for exciting new services I can get from SBC (for an additional fee, of course).
The last one was from April 7th. I'm baffled that there weren't more messages waiting. Maybe I unsubscribed, and forgot that I did. Or maybe now that I'll be checking the mailbox more or less daily SBC will resume filling it with spam.
I wonder whether the homeowner's association would let me put up one of these:
Cedarshed Industries, one of the largest manufacturers of high-end sheds and gazebos made from Western Red Cedar, today launched its newest product, the home office kit. Named the Ultimate Backyard Office, it is the first easy-to-assemble, panelized kit for quickly building an attractive free-standing office in the backyard.
A bargain at $13,000!
The scene: Papa sitting at the kitchen table, pecking away at the laptop.
Jake enters.
Do you know why I came in here?
To give me a hug?
Actually, to get a drink.
No hugs for Papa....
Jake & I paid another visit to Prairie Gardens this afternoon, to further the Garden 2006 project.
We bought: two tomato plants (a kind that's supposedly very happy in containers), one basil plant, one hot pepper plant, three corn plants and a bag of corn seeds (or is that seed corn?).
The tomato plants went into the barrels; the basil & hot peppers went into the cedar box (which, in demonstration of my total lack of carpentry skills, is falling apart); Jake & I planted the corn in two rows, next to the box.
Jake planted the seed corn. I wasn't watching, so I don't know where he put anything; we'll just have to wait until they sprout. (If they sprout.)
There are a few pictures over in the (newly-added) Garden 2006 photo album.
Expenditures today: $33.09
Total expenditures: $54.04
Tomatoes harvested: 0
In yesterday's mail: another Juror Qualification Questionnaire, this time from the US District Court, Central District of Illinois.
This one's a little fancier than the last: it's one of those fill in the oval completely with a number two pencil forms that most people leave behind when they graduate from high school.
Perhaps this means that the Circuit Court found me unsuitable for jury duty, and handed me off to the District Court. A second chance for jury duty, how exciting.
Mr. Explorer has been repaired. The Ford dealer found a used bracket (yesterday I said it was the pulley; I was wrong), so the bill was only moderately painful.
There's a lengthy list of recommended maintenance, so I'll be figuring out a schedule to get all of it done over the next few months.
But I don't have to take the bus any more (unless I want to).
A bit of excitement with Mr. Explorer this morning: the bearings in the idler pulley seized up, which snapped the serpentine belt.
And then the pulley fell off: C L U N K.
Fortunately, the process of disintegration was obvious enough, and took long enough, that I was already (in a panic and) on my way to the Ford dealer (and very nearly there) before it finished. So at least I avoided a towing charge. (When the belt snapped, the power steering cut out. This made Mr. Explorer rather difficult to steer, but I managed not to run into anything.)
Mr. Ford dealer says he's found a used idler pulley for only $30; with a new belt, brackets, parts & labor, etc., etc., etc. it will cost about $300 to get Mr. Explorer back on the road. If the used pulley turns out to be no good, the price goes up $300: new idler pulleys are expensive.
(The big & as yet unanswered question: did the idler pulley damage any other engine components besides the serpentine belt? There are no cheap engine parts on an Explorer, so I'm a little worried....)
Update: The Ford dealer says the cheap pulley is no good, which means two things: 1) this is now (at least) a $650 repair; 2) I get to take the bus home tonight. Bleagh.
