Tuesday, March 15, 2005
I noticed that Coward the duck liked to sit on the roof, while his mate was down on the ground "in harm's way". I thought that was pretty, well, cowardly, so when I went to chase them away, I went after him. So this morning, I didn't see him...until I chased her away, and she joined him on our neighbor's two story roof several hundred yards away! I think he has the hots for that widow duck, and is trying to do in his current wife: "Honey, let's go to that special little spot. Don't worry, I'll be right behind you..."
Monday, March 14, 2005
Random musings...
Spanish is going pretty good. It's a lot of work, though! I suppose the 5 1/2 units might have been a hint...
After this month, nobody's a minor any more! Yea! Now if they'd just grow up...
(I'm sure my parents must have thought that about me, too...)
Taxes can be very taxing! I suppose I could "hire them done", but that would require that I have all the documents together, and the hard part is really just locating everything. For example, that stock I sold? What was its basis? Oh, I have to figure out when I bought each lot, and some of it was automatically purchased via a re-investment thingie. I know, I could keep track of it all as it happened, but I just never seem to get around to it. So I go digging through the file cabinet--at least it is all filed neatly--and find all the bits and pieces. That is, unless I told myself "I'm going to need this for taxes", and put it aside somewhere "safe"! Then its time to figure out where I thought was safe.
My PC is acting up. I can't decide if it is hardware or just that I haven't reloaded windows since 2002. Things just seem to die randomly, and on rare occasions, it just freezes up and starts beeping. No, it isn't the smart bios that beeps out a code to tell you what's wrong: It just beeps to tell you to look at the screen, which doesn't have anything on it.
I don't really want to buy another PC right now, but if I did, I'd certainly think more about how loud it is, rather than how small it is. My "ice cube" is cute, but boy, is it loud! Apparently, the power supply fan and the little squirrel cage case fan start loud, and get louder. It's about as loud as an industrial microwave. (Maybe I'll borrow a dB meter from church and actually measure it.)
Of course, I could reload windows, and all the apps, and see if that helps. That usually takes about 2 days for the bulk of it, and several weeks for all the auxiliary things. No fun.
I'm trying to set up a linux server, using a little tiny system I found at HSC. So far, not much luck, because it won't boot from a CD, and the floppy connector is some weird tiny 26 pin connector that uses a ribbon cable I can't find. But, with a magnifying glass, some wirewrap wire, and tweezers, I was able to fashion an adapter to the normal 34 pin connector. Now I just have to decide which linux, and see if it works: SuSE--because I'm familiar with it; dsl (d*mn small linux), which was recommended because it is small; or maybe ipcop, since its purpose in life is to be a firewall, and I'm thinking of replacing my chain-o-hardware with a single box. (Well, right now it is just a netgear connected to the SBC (Stinking Big Crap) Speedstream DSL modem, but I wanted to add the belkin wifi box I picked up for cheap, except it refuses to stealth its ports, so I can't use it, unless I have it off to the side...). And I wanted to investigate port knocking.
Ah well, technology. It keeps me off the streets. Of course, my office looks like a surplus store exploded, but that's another story...
The ducks are back. But this year we have a solar pool cover, which they crap on, which beats them doing it in the pool (like they did last year), but not much. We hold the cover down with bricks: This evening, I had to fish several bricks out of the pool, because the wind was so strong that it picked up the edge of the cover, and dragged it back, and that caused the bricks to fall in! Fortunately, it was on the shallow end, so I could use a hoe to fish them out, because it is way too cold to dive into the deep end to try and fish them out!
Well, that's about it for now. Like I said, random mutterings...
Spanish is going pretty good. It's a lot of work, though! I suppose the 5 1/2 units might have been a hint...
After this month, nobody's a minor any more! Yea! Now if they'd just grow up...
(I'm sure my parents must have thought that about me, too...)Taxes can be very taxing! I suppose I could "hire them done", but that would require that I have all the documents together, and the hard part is really just locating everything. For example, that stock I sold? What was its basis? Oh, I have to figure out when I bought each lot, and some of it was automatically purchased via a re-investment thingie. I know, I could keep track of it all as it happened, but I just never seem to get around to it. So I go digging through the file cabinet--at least it is all filed neatly--and find all the bits and pieces. That is, unless I told myself "I'm going to need this for taxes", and put it aside somewhere "safe"! Then its time to figure out where I thought was safe.
My PC is acting up. I can't decide if it is hardware or just that I haven't reloaded windows since 2002. Things just seem to die randomly, and on rare occasions, it just freezes up and starts beeping. No, it isn't the smart bios that beeps out a code to tell you what's wrong: It just beeps to tell you to look at the screen, which doesn't have anything on it.
I don't really want to buy another PC right now, but if I did, I'd certainly think more about how loud it is, rather than how small it is. My "ice cube" is cute, but boy, is it loud! Apparently, the power supply fan and the little squirrel cage case fan start loud, and get louder. It's about as loud as an industrial microwave. (Maybe I'll borrow a dB meter from church and actually measure it.)
Of course, I could reload windows, and all the apps, and see if that helps. That usually takes about 2 days for the bulk of it, and several weeks for all the auxiliary things. No fun.
I'm trying to set up a linux server, using a little tiny system I found at HSC. So far, not much luck, because it won't boot from a CD, and the floppy connector is some weird tiny 26 pin connector that uses a ribbon cable I can't find. But, with a magnifying glass, some wirewrap wire, and tweezers, I was able to fashion an adapter to the normal 34 pin connector. Now I just have to decide which linux, and see if it works: SuSE--because I'm familiar with it; dsl (d*mn small linux), which was recommended because it is small; or maybe ipcop, since its purpose in life is to be a firewall, and I'm thinking of replacing my chain-o-hardware with a single box. (Well, right now it is just a netgear connected to the SBC (Stinking Big Crap) Speedstream DSL modem, but I wanted to add the belkin wifi box I picked up for cheap, except it refuses to stealth its ports, so I can't use it, unless I have it off to the side...). And I wanted to investigate port knocking.
Ah well, technology. It keeps me off the streets. Of course, my office looks like a surplus store exploded, but that's another story...
The ducks are back
. But this year we have a solar pool cover, which they crap on, which beats them doing it in the pool (like they did last year), but not much. We hold the cover down with bricks: This evening, I had to fish several bricks out of the pool, because the wind was so strong that it picked up the edge of the cover, and dragged it back, and that caused the bricks to fall in! Fortunately, it was on the shallow end, so I could use a hoe to fish them out, because it is way too cold to dive into the deep end to try and fish them out!Well, that's about it for now. Like I said, random mutterings...
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