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Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
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Saturday, August 16th, 2008
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Congratulations to Michael Phelps on an unfathomable feat! Eight gold medals in eight races with seven world records and one Olympic record.
(Heh, unfathomable, get it? Fathom? Also, I joked with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) laechim and millenia the other day that Phelps was an American gold farmer in China this year.)
But seriously, I am amazed at his accomplishment and pleased that he was able to reach his goal.
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Saturday, July 12th, 2008
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I got my car back this week, on Tuesday. Finally. They cleaned it up and everything. It was the shiniest I'd seen it since probably around the time I bought it. So, it was sixteen days of rental. The damage waiver was $15 a day (and isn't covered by insurance, for future reference). The glass ended up being only $182 after tax, so that was a nice minor discount. The total tally for deductible, glass, and rental was $922.14. This seems like a bunch, but the invoices show I probably got my money's worth. $5221.41 for the car, plus $671.04 for the rental, minus what I paid.. That's an additional $4970.31 that I didn't have to pay.
I also heard back from the roofing people about my house. The claim I need the whole thing replaced, estimated at about $3700. The deductible for that one is $1390. I haven't gotten a lot of details on the damage they found yet. It looks ok from the ground, but I know there are some loose shingles. Anyway, I've been convinced that it's probably best to just replace it now while the insurance is paying for some of it, instead of having them fix the minimum or something. If I don't, I'll probably have to pay 100% when it really needs replaced later on.
Thankfully, this year's tax refund pays for most of this. I'm feeling the burn, like ND is, but I should be able to handle it.
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We are up in the nosebleeds of today's olympic swimming trials. We are in the corner section up above the swimmer's entrance. It is the far side of the pool when they use the track camera, so, if you're watching today, you might catch a glimpse of us!
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So, on my birthday, Mother Nature decided to give me an exciting storm. This storm came with large hail in the package. This hail gave my car dents, and lots of them. Wonderful. So, I decided to go ahead and have somebody take a look at it. I have insurance for a reason, after all. I went with the closest place the insurance company listed off, which turned out to be almost right across the street. They assessed the damage at $3175.21. I have a $500 deductible, which is all I'm paying for the repairs, but man, that's more than I expected. They want to replace the hood and repair the dents on the roof. The rest of the dents will be the paintless dent repair. There were small dents on pretty much every panel. The hood and roof will need to be painted, and to do this, they need to take the front and rear windows out.
Now, back in January or February, I got a tiny chip in my windshield that turned into a huge crack. It hit the edge of the windshield before I even noticed it. I had just gotten my windshield replaced for the same exact reason in July of '07. I let it slide this time because I didn't want to spend another $250 on yet another windshield. I would have gone through my insurance, but the deductible is $500 like I said before. The place they wanted me to go to would have charged $350 anyway. I recently found out that this deductible is per occurrence too, so any time my windshield cracks, I'm going to have to pay full cost. At any rate, I asked them to just go ahead and buy a new windshield while it was already out. They'd probably break it even more when taking it out. The price on that was $220-ish.
They tell me that the repairs could be up to 8 days. I didn't ask for a rental car on the initial call to the insurance company, but they had a rental company right in the same building as the repair company. They gave me a Pontiac G6 to drive around while my car is out. The rent on that is something like $24/day and my insurance covers up to $30. I also opted for damage coverage at $15 a day. Not sure if insurance covers that bit, but either way, I'm paying some extra. I wouldn't normally, but I did for fear of storms. Things seem to be calming down, but it has been way too stormy lately for me to feel safe. I'm already having to rent that car due to damage after all.
In the end, this could still be something like an $800 ordeal. Any hopes of digging up money for a new computer to play Spore are likely dashed upon the hailstones. I leave you with links to a few pictures:
  
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As andrabbi has posted (locked), we had a close call last night for a tornado. I checked our house, trees, and immediate neighborhood this morning, and everything seems normal. We're lucky that it blew just north of us, but it was still too close for comfort.
This article from KETV describes the incident, and I've made a map of the locations because it's more interesting to look at it visually. There's also an article from the Omaha World Herald. Not many other news sources actually have information on the damage yet.
Good news is that we're safe, and it sounds like not many people were hurt at all.
Update 5:45 PM - Confirmed as a tornado that started as EF-1 and moved up to EF-2.
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My computer has successfully made it through some major surgery tonight. The diagnosis was a faulty DVD drive and lack of hard drive space. It was about an hour and a half long procedure, but the DVD replacement and drive expansion went well. There was also a CD-RWectomy in preparation for a transplant. I figured andrabbi's computer would be able to use it since the new DVD drive is a multi-burner (with LightScribe, ooOooo). The patient is recovering well, and is on the way to full use of the new 320GB hard drive (currently formatting). The new DVD drive is in use and is playing a CD (a practically impossible chore for the previous drive). The next step will be to test a movie. I haven't watched a movie on this computer in a long time. Unfortunately, the patient will have some slight cosmetic disfigurement. The DVD drive is black in a beige case. They didn't actually have beige for this drive, as far as I could tell. Oh well. All the easier to transplant it in the future.
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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
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Sunday, February 17th, 2008
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We saw Phantom today. We were right up front! It was really impressive. Dinner at HuHot is now finished. This was our delayed Valentine's date. :-)
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Saturday, February 16th, 2008
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Our TV was in the shop for about 3 weeks. It has had some funny colors, high-pitched squealing, and the picture isn't quite straight. I figured we should have someone look at it before the extra warranty we bought runs out. I think we actually had plenty of time for that. Anyway, we got it back this Tuesday, and they couldn't find anything to fix. Sure, they soldered something and fiddled with some on-screen settings, but they didn't find anything that was actually broken. It's still doing the same thing it was before. The picture is slightly "wilted", and the squealing is there. I haven't seen the major discoloration yet, but that usually only happens when playing the Wii for some reason. I'm sure it's still there too. I'm glad it was under warranty, because otherwise I would have been charged something like $200 for nothing. Not sure if the situation is a reflection of the quality of the repair shop or of Samsung..
The TiVo has been pretty cool. I'm hesitant to watch TV without it anymore, because I like being able to pause the live stream so much. It's also nice to watch things I want to watch on my own time. Stuff andrabbi wouldn't care for. For example, I've set it to record the new Knight Rider tomorrow. Andrabbi and I will be having our Valentine's Day date tomorrow 'cause we're also going to see Phantom of the Opera. Now I can watch it another day, and don't have to fuss with anything.
I would like to get more HD use out of my TV, but I'm not really willing to spend the cash. At this point, I'd want an HD TiVo, and it'd probably cost us a bunch to move up to digital cable.
I'm also pleased that the writers seem to be happy with their deal. I think some of our favorite shows will be getting another few episodes.
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Thursday, January 24th, 2008
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The weekend before last, andrabbi and I bought a TiVo box. Yes, I've been considering trying to build a MythTV box for a while. I even drew up some hardware lists to try and find the cheapest suitable machine. I managed to get the price down to about $400 for a dual-tuner media-machine with room to grow. The problem was that we couldn't really justify the price tag, even at that price. We have been trying to get a better handle on our budget. Our reserves have become uncomfortably low after buying a house and seeing a few unexpected expenses. (For example, my windshield has cracked a second time since we bought the house. I've never had a windshield crack on me before this.) Anyway, the TiVo service was cheaper than renting a DVR from our cable company because the cable company's price included service upgrades and rental fees. The machine itself was not too badly priced. We got the 80gb standard definition dual-tuner. Most of what we watch, we can still only access in SD, but if there is a show we can catch in HD, we can always swap over to the antenna and see it there. I ended up buying the box from Best Buy because the first store I went to didn't have the version I wanted. This turned out well for us in the end. In addition to the $150 mail-in rebate that TiVo is offering with the SD machines, Best Buy had its own promotion and gave us a $50 gift card on the spot! We effectively got the machine for $50 plus $17 or so in tax.
Since getting TiVo, I've spent a lot more time in front of the TV. A lot of it is just playing with the new "toy" and figuring out the controls and what it can do. I do have it record some low priority shows that I wouldn't normally watch, however. If there's an interesting special coming up, we'll set it to record and not worry when it's actually on. (Example: Lewis Black's latest.) We can also have two things recording at once and not have to worry about if we're busy, which is nice. (Example: Biggest Loser and Idol.) The VCR is also still hooked up, so technically we could record a third on tape and watch a fourth over-the-air. The goal of all this was to not be so chained to the TV. andrabbi has had to work a lot in the evening which required a lot of taping to avoid missed shows. We also wanted to be able to go to the gym or do other things without having to worry about missing or taping a show. (Now we just need to drag ourselves to the gym.) With a couple of shows starting up regular episodes recently and several recent botched tapings, we also wanted to get this set up fairly quickly. This is another reason why MythTV ended up getting the boot for now. Maybe one day, if we have a large chunk of spare change, I can make an ultimate TV machine. Until then, TiVo is perfectly fine.
I had a couple of other things on my mind before I started writing this, but they're gone now. Oh well. Maybe in another post ... if I can pull myself away from the TiVo.
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Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
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I'm coming to a slow realization of why I can rarely follow and understand the code I've working with for the past year and a half. It helps when the guys you had to lean on before to provide just enough understanding to get by on are gone. That reason is: it's SCHWARBAGE.
Over the Christmas season, there has been rather little assigned to do. I decided to find something small (ha, not with this code) that I could fix up. One particular user interface was laid out rather poorly, so I thought that would be something I could do. It's been about 3 weeks of futzing around with the code. I've made parts of it better, but I've also broken other parts. I'm not willing to commit anything to the repository because parts of the display are worse off and I don't know what I did to break them. What looked like a minor UI layout fix led me into a major tangled ball of Holy Wow, That's Disgusting. It seems they have control and/or data management type code mixed in with their user interface code. It's also hacked together and so intertwined with other pieces such that it is now a precarious Jenga tower. It takes only one or two pieces before it comes crashing down. The code is heavily layered and tangled hacks wrapped with more hacks. This is what you get when you develop for demos on short time frames.
Anyway, I've nearly forgotten what my other topics were. I am going to try my best to better myself in software engineering, and in general actually, this year. Christmas gave me yet another book that I need to read. Hopefully I can make more time to read. I have a bunch of mini "resolutions" like that in the back of my head that I need to get written down. They're mostly little bad habits that I have seen in myself and am tired of or little good habits that I know I should start. If I can get a couple of things changed, I'll feel better. I wanted to try a monthly refresh of these mini goals. Monthly "resolutions". That, I suppose, is the key goal. If I can get that going and get things written down, it should be easier to do. I'm also not forcing myself to change things all at once. I know that that is the hard way. Small moves, Ellie, small moves.
I've made a WGA support icon out of this and set it as my default. Feel free to use.
There are a couple of things I've been eyeing that I didn't get for Christmas. I need a new jacket. You should see the sleeves. They're shredded. I want a new hard drive. It's probably the only thing worth upgrading in this computer any more. I could get a new cell phone. Verizon's "new every two" deal! And, I could probably use some Shoe Goo. All my shoes' soles crack, which is bad in winter. I need to make up my mind on some of these and just get 'em. I've been weary of buying things lately due to budget concerns, but I can try and save money elsewhere. These are things I kinda need.
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Monday, December 17th, 2007
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I have a new word I'd like to share. Taking (totally stealing) a page from millenia's vocab posts:
adfarct (n.): An section of a website or other user interface that is useless or worthless due to the collection of too many ads. Also, adfarction, adfarcted.
Useage: That website has such a severe adfarction, I can't stand to go there.
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Saturday, December 15th, 2007
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I've started uploading more pictures of our Italy trip. I've only done Siena and the first day in Rome. I still have the Vatican, the Coliseum, and the Trevi Fountain to go and then I'll be done! Too bad most of the ones I've already uploaded will be pushed off the list of viewable photos.
Once that's up, I can get to the two 4th of July sets, a couple of zoo visits, Pittsburgh visits, pictures of Mocha, random interesting shots... I'm only a year and a half behind. I need to buckle down and get that pro acct so I can feel better about uploading over 200 shots. It's pointless to upload more since they'll get bumped off immediately. C'est la vie.
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Saturday, November 10th, 2007
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DO WANT .. (see also)
For those not interested in link-clicking and article-reading, EA is donating the original SimCity to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The important thing is that they'll be releasing an open source, GPL version at some point. This means I can poke around at the code and modify it! Anybody else interested in messing with it with me? I'm not sure what I'd do with it, but I'd really like to play with it.
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Sunday, October 28th, 2007
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Mocha participates in the woot-off last week. She just hopped up there and eventually laid down on the nice warm keyboard.
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Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
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Last week, I bought a wireless pcmcia card for my ancient laptop and I've been trying to get it to work under Ubuntu linux for a while now. I want to get this down before I forget about what I did. For curiosity or reference, this is my laptop. The card I bought is a D-Link DWL-G630, hardware version C2. I followed various information on the web to try and get this thing working. Most of it was at the Ubuntu wiki.
First thing I did was discover that the card was not recognized automatically when I put it in. I found out that this was a driver issue and went about looking for the proper driver for my card. I found a page somewhere that listed the card as being compatible with ndiswrapper and had a link to a driver to use. I think it was at the ndiswrapper page itself. Ndiswrapper allows linux to use vendors' drivers when linux users can't create their own for whatever reason. I was able to set up the driver pretty easily and the card was now recognized.
The next thing I did was try and set up the network card in the settings. I filled out what information the system asked for, but noted that it didn't ask about encryption. I have my home network set up with WPA encryption and a hidden SSID. I poked around looking for information, and I saw talk of a program called network-manager and another one called wpa_supplicant.
I'd like to take a tangent here for a sec. Most of the docs I saw said "oh, wireless is so easy now", "oh, network manager does it automatically", or such. Note to linux community: It's not always that easy, especially if you screw up along the way or have a non-standard install. My laptop is so old that both cd and floppy drive broke. I can't boot with the USB port either. I have a working LS-120 drive, but who uses that. I ended up doing some magic to get a network install of xubuntu server on there. This is where half of my problem came from.
So, I discover I don't have network-manager and go get it. They say just restart and the applet will show up in the tray. From there you can add your network! So, I restart and see nothing. I restart several more times after tweaks, updates and such but still nothing. Finally, I discover that I have session saving turned off. I turn it back on, run the applet manually and restart. This allows the app to start up on boot and also fixed my issue of "I can't find the setting to make Gaim not log in on startup." The app is running, but I don't see the way to add my network. There's the wired network and some useless info in the menus.
Assuming network-manager isn't working right, I switch my focus to wpa_supplicant. I think maybe I have to set up the network information there beforehand. "Edit wpa_supplicant.conf" it says. I don't have that file. I spend a good amount of time trying to find examples and understand the options there. I make what I believe to be the wpa_supplicant.conf I need and try it out. No dice. I'm stuck again.
I end up talking with my brother, Rick, about this since he's had a bit more experience with linux and probably wireless on linux. I explain things and he has me try a few things for him. Eventually, he has me delete the wpa_supplicant.conf and the info from the original network settings stuff I did. It turns out that original settings stuff I had was blocking the network-manager app from seeing my wireless card. After a restart, I was able to see the network card in the network-manager app and set up my network settings properly.
So, like I said, not nearly that easy because I glazed over a small warning and had no clue what the problem was. At one point, I even tried to heed that warning, but it looked like there was no effect when I modified the original settings. Network-manager didn't give any indication of what was wrong. No grayed out options or anything. It just appeared useless. Thankfully, Rick figured out the signs.
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Sunday, September 16th, 2007
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We did the American Lung Association walk this morning. People filled the street as far as you could see.
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amused.
spent.
blah.
relieved.
tired.
busy.
