The mostly harmless pedant.

stormdog @ 2008-07-06T23:41:00

2008-07-07T04:42:47Z

Sorry I've been MIA this weekend. There have been a bunch of posts from people that I read and enjoyed, but it's too late and I'm too tired to respond in depth, and here comes work again, of course. I appreciate all of you who write and take time to share your lives with me that way, even if I don't always respond. Thank you.

*hugs*

More later.

stormdog @ 2008-07-03T12:12:00

2008-07-03T17:21:42Z

I now have Google Mail set up to automatically forward any incoming reminders from Google Calendar to my phone as SMS messages. Now I'll get an email and a text message a week before moiracoon's birthday so I don't forget it like I usually do! This will be done for our anniversaries too. Using tech to compensate for a handicap in the ability to remember numbers is not cheating. If anything, I think it shows more effort, don't you?

Plus, now when people ask me for her birthday as confirmation info on something or other, I just have to look on Google Calendar!

I need to call the court today about paying my first fine. I've been trying to get the papers together and in the right place to send to the legal firm and I've flaked. Either they were in Andrea's car, or I forgot to put them in my bag, or I left them in the car and couldn't find them at work....it's been a comedy of errors, all of them mine.

But I can at least get the info in for the later one. That one has a court date in the middle of my training, so I'm not sure how that's going to work.

I bought a bunch of food for lunches yesterday. And, of course, I forgot to bring any of it. So I'm going to have beans for the third time this week. I'm glad there were so many of them!

I have to use my lunch hour today and get caught up on the police stuff. And I have to catch up on my ledger in Quicken this weekend. I hate being a grown up sometimes.

I know what most of my weekend is consisting of. Dinner tonight with rileybear67 and awfulhorrid. Potluck dinner tomorrow with a few locals. Saturday, while moiracoon and mocha_mephooki are at The Taste of Chicago, I'll have the privilege of Rileybear's company again! Then the four of us will connect back in Kenosha for dinner that night. Sunday? Probably working on some housey stuff. And sleeping in. A lot of sleeping in; yeah.

What are you all doing this weekend? Inquiring dogs want to know! *bounces*

stormdog @ 2008-07-03T06:44:00

2008-07-03T11:45:16Z

Today is 'dog and 'coon visit a woof and ferret day'!! *bounces*

Just have to get that pesky 'work' think out of the way first....

stormdog @ 2008-07-01T21:35:00

2008-07-02T02:37:14Z

A very slow moving coal train just stopped behind my house. And then, when it started up again, the locomotives were right there so I got to hear this awesome upward-sliding electrical woosh as the diesel generators came online and got it moving again. How cool!! I'm going to miss the trains when we move.

stormdog @ 2008-07-01T21:18:00

2008-07-02T02:32:02Z

I've always been a little behind the times. I mean, back when Windows 95 came out, I couldn't believe I'd ever get used to it. I did just fine booting up Wing Commander or Ultima 7 from a command prompt, thank you very much, and didn't need some bloated GUI getting between me and my computer. (Yes, 3.11 was only on my screen [or more properly, my parents' screen] long enough for me to tell it to go away and give me my command prompt!)

I had the same reaction when 2000 came out, and again with XP. My user interface wasn't broken! Why did they have to keep fixing it?!? (I feel the same way about Vista, except that I'm fully convinced that that feeling is entirely justified.)

And it hasn't just been in OS choice either. Take hardware platform (I love my C128!), in entertainment media (love my CED Videodisk player!), in my choice of hobby (I need to make more time to get out and use my grandfather's forge and anvil), and, yes, even in my choice of email client.

I haven't had a web-based mail interface since high school. Yeah, that was a while ago. I don't know exactly how many years; probably about ten. I had Hotmail back then, back before Microsoft bought it. My very first email address was juggle_man@hotmail.com (haven't had that one in four or five years, but I had it a long time!). After that, I moved to email hosted on my own server, on stormdog.fdns.net. It was Mercury Mail running on Kitsune, my little 200Mhz Pentium Pro box, back then. I used Pegasus as my reader. I'd always liked pegasi anyway, so it was a good fit.

Somewhere along the line, my server was upgraded to a Pentium III Xeon box, and my mail client became Thunderbird, which has the most fantastic set of filtering options I've ever seen in a mail reader. I could rave about Thunderbird's mail filtering options for hours! The ability to create custom filters that look for custom x-headers in email messages? Sublime!!

But all good things must come to an end. I really want to start simplifying a lot of my life. One of the things I want to do is move to a slower internet connection, and find other ways to manage many of the things that I use my server for right now so I can, yes, decommission it. It's had a good run, but I want to save on power, time, money, space, noise, and effort in maintaining it.

So I'm moving mail clients again. It will be a slow process as I transition over, but I have an invite from rileybear67 for a Gmail account, and, despite my protestations over the years about how I was never going to go to this Gmail thing, or deal with web-accessible email, ever...well, the times are changing.

I have a new Gmail address, and I'm going to start using that to respond to people and sign up for new things, and will start setting it as a reply-to address on emails from my stormdog.fdns.net account. God/dess, but I'm going to miss being able to do things like set customer reply-to addresses, or have the nearly 20 distinct email addresses that I have right now, and I'll really miss the kind of filtering I can do with Thunderbird. There is simply no comparison, as far as I can tell, between the two as far as filtering.

But the fact that I have nearly 100% uptime, and that this will be available to me anywhere without a mail client, and the fact that I will no longer have to keep mail services running on my own hardware...well, I think it will be worth it in the end. We shall see.

I'm also looking at options to replace the pictures hosting functions of my server. I've found a few sites that seem to do free pictures hosting, and I may break down and figure out how to sign up for Flickr to host my own pictures. Anyone else have any recommendations?

(You know, I just realized that I could probably configure Thunderbird to still do my message filtering for me. And yes! I checked, and Thunderbird will talk to Gmail! Okay, maybe this won't be quite as bad as I thought it would be. Anybody know if message headers are passed, fully intact, on to Thunderbird from Gmail?)

stormdog @ 2008-06-30T19:57:00

2008-07-01T00:59:22Z

I is tired puppy! I think I'm going to bed in just a few minutes.

I'd like to catch up with a post on the weekend, but I think I'll compose one when I'm more awake. Good things are happening that I want to write about. But.... *yawwwwns* so tired. I think I was up too late on Sunday night....

stormdog @ 2008-06-27T18:35:00

2008-06-27T23:36:04Z

I'm awfully tired of my cats right now.

stormdog @ 2008-06-27T09:36:00

2008-06-27T14:37:40Z

I don't know why, but the Pastoral Symphony is so totally stuck in my head right now! Maybe it's because of moiracoon's mention of nymphs and satyrs in her journal....

Hmm. Nymphs and satyrs. Hmmmmmm. Is it time for ren-faire yet?

stormdog @ 2008-06-27T08:18:00

2008-06-27T13:25:45Z

I know that the lovely and talented moiracoon will not be at Kenosha coffee tonight. I also heard from the talented (and rather cute himself) posicat that he will probably not be in attendance, which tells me that we will probably be without a novaotter as well.

How many of the usual suspects should I expect to be there tonight? Just wondering if I should make alternate plans. Like cleaning the house or putting things on Ebay or something.

I filled up the Aveo yesterday and did my first calibration of the ScanGauge. I had to adjust fuel consumption up by 2%. I knew it was reading a little high since my tank average said it was about 37 but my actual mileage came out to about 35 and a half. But that's ok. Now that I know it's close to accurate, I'm finding that much more motivation to keep that number up and I squeezed out 37.5 on the way to work, which means I didn't even use a gallon of gasoline to get here. Not too bad, though it helps that traffic was extra light today. I do think I'm going to check with that guy who told me if I wasn't getting 40 after setting up my ScanGauge, I should talk to him about a driving clinic. *grins*

I'm also amused that I had a friend call me on my cell phone to complain that I needed to at least drive the speed limit....

I had a fun, low-key evening with Posi and tybis looking through a gigantic church rummage sale that filled multiple levels of a school and the adjoining parking lot. One of them found a lens case for me that I'll use for my 28-80, and Tybis found a really nifty old exposure meter. I looked at another HEPA filter, twin to the one at the house, but the fan had a bad bearing and I know me; I'd never get around to replacing the fan.

Other plans for today include putting my seat back into my car so I can drive my family to my grandparents' place tomorrow. My dad wants to see how I hypermile. *grins*

stormdog @ 2008-06-26T16:48:00

2008-06-26T21:49:26Z

I'm unexpectedly free this evening. I've put out a couple of feelers as far as things for the doggy to do, but if nothing pans out, maybe I'll work on stuff around the house. As I said in one of my last posts, I am a bit behind on that. *shrugs*

stormdog @ 2008-06-25T21:58:00

2008-06-26T03:00:19Z

Moira reminded me today that I haven't heard anything about my awaited government stimulus check. so, as I did a few weeks ago, I tried calling the automated number and, just as I did a few weeks ago, got nowhere. So I crawled the internet looking for a number that could get me to a real person. By the way, if you'd like it, it is 1-800-829-0582. When asked for 'the extension you were given', enter 462. (Given by whom? I don't know. I gave it to you; I think that counts.)

First I was told that my filing status was married filing jointly. That struck me as odd, since I'd filed separately, mailed them separately, and written separate checks for them (which I was told they showed as having recieved). The IRS rep looked into it further and told me that my return had "failed to post correctly". I asked whether she could tell me why or what the problem with it was, but she could not. She said that she has referred me to the person who is working my case and I will hear back within 30 days. Ooh, how exciting; an unexpected call from the IRS sometime within the next month! I can't wait!

On the upside, I was told today that I have a pay raise that will be effective on my 2nd paycheck this month. I don't know how much yet, but will find out during my review, either this Friday, or the coming Monday. I hate reviews, but I guess I can't complain too much since I haven't had one for about two years now.

The starter on my car is misbehaving. Not seriously, but once in a while it doesn't quite mesh right, as though it has a broken tooth or two. I was an idiot and, after I got my oil changed last month, tried to start the car while it was running after they pulled it out of the bay. It was so quiet, I didn't realize it was on. I need to get Carmax to look at it. I'm vaguely worried that they'll say something about my warranty since I had my oil changed, like, 50 miles past 3000 after buying the car. I know, I worry about small things that I probably shouldn't worry about. But I've heard too many horror stories. I'm also about that far over right now, but didn't get my oil changed because, though savings is still there of course, I slightly miscalculated and am out of checking account money. But we get a paycheck tomorrow, so it's all good.

I need to locate documents relating to my traffic tickets so I can get them faxed to the lawyer who'll be working on my case. I have been too busy and have not done this. My court dates are in July, so I should do this soon.

I've been too busy to email awful_horrid about car pooling. Today was spent entirely at my parents house after getting home. Yesterday was spent in bed, mostly sleeping. I think I slept ten or eleven hours yesterday, and boy was that nice.

Speaking of at my parents, it was time for a revelation to farm_cat. It's so nice to get that out in the open!

I've not had much time to myself to work on household stuff lately, or get Ebay done. I'm really thinking about working in some vacation time again soon, but with class coming up in the middle of July, and possibly more after that, in September, I don't know when I'll be able to do that. At least I'm not using vacation time for classes; I was advised by our team lead that he certainly isn't, anyway.

Oh, and this Saturday is my grandmother's 75th birthday, so there's a big family get-together for that. I'm going to be driving my family so they can see how to hyper-mile. *grins* Mocha, I'll get in touch with you sometime this week and see if you'd like to get together over the weekend and when. If I happen to get home early enough tomorrow, maybe we can talk about it then. If not, I'll call you.

Words to make a day: the doggy edition

2008-06-24T14:37:57Z

"Can I call you pupshine?"

*giggle-blush* Totally!!

stormdog @ 2008-06-23T11:02:00

2008-06-23T16:05:31Z

Thanks to everyone who made this weekend thoroughly wonderful. You know who you are! *grins*

So much to write about, so little time. I was so very tempted to call in to work today. But I was a good puppy and drove my butt down to Illinois (though I was a few minutes late getting in).

I will write more, for sure. Until then, I'm having one the best Mondays I can think of!

stormdog @ 2008-06-20T12:21:00

2008-06-20T17:23:03Z

Hey rileybear67; ankhorite posted a link in her Livejournal to a ferret cam at the Smithsonian national zoo. There's a ferret with a newborn on the cam. There may be another one on the way; not sure. But I thought I'd point it out for you (or anybody else who wants to see ferret-mama.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/NorthAmerica/default.cfm

stormdog @ 2008-06-19T13:58:00

2008-06-19T18:59:42Z

Hey, my company is being sued. Sounds like for patent infringement. The help desk just had to provide a couple computers for some lawyers to use to look at our software.

This should be interesting....

stormdog @ 2008-06-19T12:04:00

2008-06-19T17:07:07Z

I've been lazy. Well, honestly, I've just been busy. My brain has been full. You know how it goes. One day, you're walking along, minding your own business. Then suddenly, wham! Some evil rogue comes up from behind and stuffs things into your brain! Socko!!

Ok, it wasn't quite like that either. But to make a long story short, I haven't gotten around to writing up the rest of my trip to the UP. So instead, here's a picture of a dog. No, there's nothing on its head. It's just one of my favorite pictures of my Kuma-bear that I've taken to date.

Yup; that's my puppeh.

(Oh, this was shot with the EF 28-50mm that I borrowed from sabrinageek for the weekend. Thanks 'Brina!)

It's at F4, ISO 100, and 1/640th exposure at 35mm.

I have a black and white version of this on my wall by my desk at work, but our printers are not that great here so it doesn't look as nice as this.

Fluff post!

2008-06-18T15:35:19Z

Fluff post 'cause I feel pretty good today! Whee!

With the craziness on Monday, I forgot to mention that my ScanGauge showed up on Monday. I've been using it yesterday and today. Now, I've been averaging about 36.6, more or less MPG. I programmed the ScanGauge with my car's engine size and fuel tank size and am keeping an eye on it while driving. Using it, I've managed a 42mpg trip home from Antioch yesterday, and a 39mpg trip to work this morning. I know that it isn't going to super accurate until it has a chance to go through a couple of tanks of fuel and calibrate, but I'm hoping that it's at least close. 'Cause I'd be pretty excited about 42! Now that I have a really sharp picture of what kind of driving maximized fuel economy and what kind of driving drops it like a rock, I may try a couple other routes to work and make notes on what works the best.

Of course, after a couple of months of no such activity, a cat threw up on the carpet overnight. But I got it all cleaned up, so that's good. I also took all of our garbage outside last night. Oh wow, that was not fun. Lids had been left off a couple of the cans and I had garbage soup to deal with. Ick. But I took care of it all and have another thing to feel good about.

Moira and I are going to spend a bunch of Saturday with rileybear67, and I'm looking forward to that. And tomorrow, I'm going to stop in at posicat's place 'cause I haven't seen him in a while and I want to catch up.

I have more good stuff going on, but it would take time to explain. I'm going to try and do that later. What kind of good stuff is going on in your life?

stormdog @ 2008-06-16T22:50:00

2008-06-17T03:53:28Z

Apparently, crying after being asked to exit your vehicle doesn't really work for boys. I got arrested tonight for an outstanding warrant from Pleasant Prairie last year. I still have marks on my wrists from the handcuffs.

What was the warrant for my arrest for? Defective headlights. I kid you not. I would swear I sent a check in for that ticket. *sighs*

I've had better days than this one. moiracoon picked me up from where I was waiting, barefoot (my shoes were in my car which the police left on Green Bay Road) outside the police station and brought me to get the Aveo.

I'd left my wallet at work since I'd been kind of stressed out when I left, but I was not even hassled about lack of ID by the police, amazingly enough.

stormdog @ 2008-06-16T08:56:00

2008-06-16T14:30:05Z

I love the quiet, contented feeling of being caught up on things. That's the way I feel after this weekend. Though Andrea was out of town on Saturday night at her slumber party, she rented a steam cleaner for me and I, after cleaning detritus off of various furniture pieces and moving them into the kitchen, went pretty thoroughly over our carpets with it. I went through about fifteen or twenty gallons of water and got just about all of the spots out. Even on the stair landing where the litter box had been. After that, I sprinkled some pet odor removing stuff on the carpet to suck in scent and vacuumed. Then I moved our HEPA filter downstairs and let it run for a few hours. Everything looks so much better, and smells better too.

I moved the litter box into the kitchen since Stormy is still unwilling to go upstairs. Andrea says that, when she came downstairs Sunday morning, Stormy had pooped on the rug by the front door and was walking around crying. I have a good place for it; I just have to make sure I scoop it every day.

I also got started on the garage by breaking down and bundling a bunch of boxes. I've added them to the ones on the front porch to go out with the recycling this week. I'm going to get a bunch of stuff out to the curb this week, and then do more work on cleaning out the garage so I can get rid of some shelfy cabinets in there too. I put the inflatable pool into a box in the back until I figure out what to do with it and whether Posi wants it.

And at the end of Sunday evening, I caught up on money stuff and wrote checks for my car payment and student loan and whatnot, and paid for cell phones and other bills on line. I have to make a couple phone calls today and figure out how much I need to send to a few other places, but I'm mostly done with bills up to the present and that's a satisfying feeling.

I also had people over at the house on Saturday afternoon. After netrage emailed me during the week about doing something this weekend, I thought I'd invite posicat up too. So Posi brought tybis and novaotter, and Netrage brought his girlfriend and kids. I hadn't quite expected there to be so many people, so I was a little worried that people would be bored or there wouldn't be enough food. Fortunately, DDR occupied the kids for a while and we actually had food left over; we didn't even start on the corn that Posi's group brought. After food, we sat and watched silly Flash movies on the TV computer, and that was pretty good too.

After posting in the certification community for suggestions, I think I'm going to go for an MSCA cert on top of the Cisco boot camp I'm going to. Hopefully there'll be some synergy there in my future job hunt. I know that what would really help is a college degree, but I don't know when I'll manage that. Still, I'm thinking I should look into what I'd still need as far as classes or credits in order to do it.

Well, work now.

stormdog @ 2008-06-13T10:20:00

2008-06-13T15:31:32Z

From the CleanMPG boards comes a hypermiling accesory for a Prius that I thought I'd share with kellicjtiger.

Actually, I'm thinking about making one for my Aveo too. *grins*

Kellic, I'm curous, what kind of MPGs do you get from your Prius? Inquiring dogs want to know! Do you get above EPA spec? Do you feel like the car is worth it?

I think I'm a little below an 8th of a tank right now, and with a little over 300 miles on the trip odometer, I think I'm looking at a 36MPG tank again, even after using the A/C when posicat was in the car on the way to the buffet yesterday (and boy can you feel that compressor drag the engine down! I'd only had it on very briefly once before to see if it worked).

I'm shipping the phones and switch to stormgren today, so there's a little less weight. I wish I had my ScanGauge, but so many people have been buying them via the cleanMPG group buys that they're back-ordered! Should be here next week. I'm tempted to wait on taking out the back seat 'till I have it so I can get a more exact sense of what it gains me. I've been spreading the gospel at work, too. I've sent links to a few people I work with who've expressed interested in trying out some tricks.

============

Filled up later on. Another 36.8 MPG tank for, again, ~~about 140%~~ (oops; hasty mental math is not my strongsuit; that's about 120%) of the combined EPA rating for my vehicle. Rock. I'm going for 40.

stormdog @ 2008-06-13T06:34:00

2008-06-13T11:36:32Z

The second 'Brina-cat song:

I'm a small grey cat
That's good enough for me
'cause I'm a small grey cat
And everybody wants to be
a small grey cat.

In case you've forgotten, this is the first 'Brina-cat song:

I'm a little grey cat
Not a little orange cat
Not a little purple cat
I'm a little grey cat

'Brina likes to sing when no one is around. *nodnod*

stormdog @ 2008-06-12T08:25:00

2008-06-12T14:09:04Z

I woke up late today; a couple minutes after I usually leave for work. Even better, I woke up from a dream that I no longer had a job at my company. That kind of sucks. I at least managed, after hastily getting ready to go and running out the door, to make it to work a couple minutes before 8, though I'm sure my gas mileage suffered for it.

moiracoon and I celebrated my dad's birthday with he, my mom, and both of my brothers last night. Cake and ice cream on top of half a slice of cheesecake during the day and a few burritos at home. I was over-full. I especially don't see my middle brother enough, but it was nice to see both of them. And, I overcame my phone phobia and chatted with custardfairy last night for a little while while Moira was napping. That was nice; thank you!

I have a headache today; I may run out to Walgreens at lunch to get something for it. I have enough food left in the freezer that I can wait 'till tomorrow for my approximately weekly drive to Aldi for more lunch stuff.

Well, today I think Moira and I are stopping to see Posi for a bit after work. Then on Friday there's the coffee meetup. I'd really like to work on getting the downstairs cleaned up somewhere in there 'cause it's really time to rent a steam cleaner and do the carpets again.

Hey, speaking of that, I need to start slowly convincing the cats to use the litter box upstairs instead of the one downstairs. I only put that one there because Stormy was really nervous about her new house and didn't seem willing to venture upstairs. If I take the litter box from the first landing on the stairs and move it to the second landing, and then thoroughly steam clean the carpet where it was, will they start going up to the second landing to use it, or will they decide to keep on using the same spot?

stormdog @ 2008-06-11T10:44:00

2008-06-11T15:45:17Z

Oh! And happy belated birthday to my dad, barton_fender, who never reads this thing anyway. *grins*

Click his link and look at his eye-con; it's awesome! There's also the beginning of some fan-fic he and my mom wrote for a shared-world project called Shadow Unit that Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Will Shetterly, and a bunch of other really talented people are working on. Good stuff!

stormdog @ 2008-06-11T08:22:00

2008-06-11T14:00:26Z

Oh my god; there is still cheesecake here from yesterday. Must not eat!! Much.

Another coworker has a dog here today, despite objections from our facilities manager. She is a four year old Golden named Polly and is very pretty and mellow. I'd love to take Kuma to work one of these days.

My server crashed during the reboot that Microsoft's Tuesday night patch forced last night. I woke up to a machine that was stuck in the BIOS for it's onboard SCSI controller at the point where it enumerates the devices on the SCSI bus. I rebooted a couple times, to no effect. I shut it down, took the side off, and reaseated both the non-onboard SCSI controller and the data cables to the hard drives. That didn't work, but I realized after that reboot that the light on my tape drive was blinking like crazy while the computer sat looking for devices. I pulled the data cable from the tape drive and rebooted again, and it came up. Weirdness; I'll have to investigate more when I get home.

That ate up half my morning, and trying to figure out why my front door wouldn't close took another five minutes (there was a screw on the strike plate that was coming loose and I had to fix it). Fortunately I was still out the door in time to meet Evil Bob to carpool to work, which we're going to try to do every Wednesday as long as his schedule will allow. We were doing that more previously, but the nature of his job meant he would get stuck pretty late with some regularity. We talked about hypermiling techniques ("I'm not going to try any of that stuff; my vehicle's just too big." *shrugs* He drives a KIA Sorento. He does at least have his tires aired up to max sidewall and keeps pretty close to the speed limit.) and other car technology. We're going to alternate between cars I think.

On the house front, I had a minor freak-out last night. I got home around 8:30, borrowed the lawn mower from my parents, mowed the lawn, returned the mower, and finally noticed at around 9:30 that, due to a stepped on M&M getting tracked into the house and leaving a couple stains on the carpet that I hadn't had time to work on, some ants had decided to come on in through the front door and investigate. farm_cat, using Google-fu, told me to put a hot iron on top of a few paper towels on top of the stain to use the heat to pull the chocolate into the paper towels. I tried that and melted a two or three inch swath of carpet. *sighs* But Andrea, who'd just gotten home herself, was able to help me get the rest of it up and did wonders for keeping my brain from exploding. I am deeply grateful to her. Hopefully we've resolved the ant issue too.

She made fish fillets for me. The cheap-ass generic square breaded ones, and put them on hamburger buns with a slice of cheese and some tartar sauce and it was wonderful. My dad makes those a lot, and it's total comfort food. *giggles* moiracoon, I am so lucky to have you in my life. Thank you for being there.

stormdog @ 2008-06-10T15:26:00

2008-06-10T20:28:20Z

It is good that I am not in my company's Chicago office. They had pizza brought in. From Lou Malnati's. They have 12, count them, twelve left over.

I would have tried to eat them all. *sighs* Lou Malnati's.......

Instead, I had a big slice of cheesecake since our manager decided to buy as all a big one from The Cheesecake Factory. I kind of wish I hadn't, but it was yummy.