YSIHF (1): The Hunter's 12 Days of Christmas

OK Folks, you saw it here first, on December 13, 2005, the Hunter's 12 Days of Christmas. This is original with me, I have been working on it off and on for the past 2 or 3 years. A bunch of us faculty and staff guys did it tonight at the college Christmas party. Soon as I get hold of a photo I'll post it here.

Hunter’s 12 Days of Christmas
by Steve Stratford
a turkey in a pine tree
2 mourning doves
3 wild geese
4 decoy ducks
5 lucky shots
6 hunting permits
7 shotgun shells
8 cups of coffee
9 pheasants flying
10 frozen fingers
11 noisy squirrels
12 ten-point bucks

Refillable Cartridges for Epson 300

Well I got sick of my cheap-o Epson Stylus Photo ink-jet and got a more expensive one (the R300). It has separate cartridges. I just couldn't keep the nozzles clean on the other one, even though I always used Epson ink.

Anyway, I've purchased a set of refillable cartridges. I was going to purchase a continuous ink system, but I don't do that much printing, plus I don't like the way it looks. So I bought a set on eBay. They come with a little syringe and bottles of ink. Pull the stopper in the refill hole out, put it in the air hole, insert syringe, pull it back, and let the cartridge suck the ink in. Swap the stopper to the refill hole, should be back in business.

So far so good. The pictures look great, ink seems compatible with Epson glossy photo paper. Refilling looks to be straightforward, though I haven't had to do it yet. No clogged ink nozzles, changing over to the new cartridges was a breeze (hit maintenance button, unplug printer, insert new cartridge, plug printer in, turn it on).

WOW Noise Ninja

From MacAddict, I just discovered a new program. I have downloaded it, tried it, and immediately purchased it. It's called Noise Ninja, and it's from PictureCode. It's the most amazing software--it will take the noise out of digital photos, especially those shot at 400 ISO.

Look at this before:



And after:



Cool, huh! Much smoother. (2nd photo also shows some dark/light balancing)

--Steve

some-time-blog

I found out from a magazine today that my blog is a some-time-blog: "an inchoate entity of formless matter in the blogosphere."

But you know what? That's fine with me. Because I'm interested in many things, and what piques my interest today may be totally different than what catches it tomorrow. If it interests you, read about it. Someday someone will key in something in google, and my page will pop up, and guess what? They'll learn something they never knew before.

Phooey on some-time-blog. As the old song says, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."

Christmas Tree Lights

Bah. Humbug!

There now I feel better.

Cinnamon Update #2

I switched a week or so ago to 1800 mg in the morning and 1800 mg at night.

Today's blood pressure reading: 124/73. This is about what my blood pressure is normally. So it appears that cinnamon does not affect my blood pressure. I'll go to the doctor in a few weeks and get my cholesterol checked.

Good Habits of Regular Givers

Tonight in our annual church business meeting I shared the following "Good Habits of Regular Givers" with our church members:

• Whenever the Lord gives to you, you always remember to give some back (Deut. 16:17, Prov. 3:9-10, Mal. 3:8).
• You commit to regular giving (I Cor. 16:2, Mat 23:23).
• You give to special needs as the Lord leads and the opportunity arises (Luke 7:37-38).
• You cheerfully (I Cor. 9:7) give a personally substantive (Mat 12:44) offering.
• You pray about your giving (I Thes 5:17).
• You order your finances to make it possible to give (II Cor. 8:12).
• You work to get, and you work to give (Eph. 4:28).
• You get in order to give; you don’t give in order to get (Prov. 11:24-25, Luke 6:38, II Cor. 9:11).
• If you want to give more, you pray for God’s increased blessing (Jas 4:12, II Cor. 8:5).
• If you want to give more, you work harder to earn more (Prov. 10:4).
• If you want to give more, you make a financial sacrifice (Acts 2:45).
• You give because God is pleased when you give (Heb. 13:15-16).
• You give because giving yields treasure in heaven (Phil. 4:17-18, II Cor 9:6, Mat. 6:19-20).
• You give because giving results in thanksgiving and praise to God (II Cor. 9:12).

Toddler's Creed

This is credited to Elisa Morgan, president of MOPS International (Mothers of PreSchoolers).

Toddler's Creed

If I want it, it's mine.
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it's mine.
If I can take it away from you, it's mine.
If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
If it's mine, it will never belong to anyone else, no matter what.
If we are building something together, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks just like mine, it is mine.

Boy that hits close to home. :)

Favorite OS X Gizmos & Gadgets Redux

In my other post below I said "SoundSource" by RogueAmoeba but I've since discovered a better freebie utility called "Detour." It does the same thing as SoundSource, only you can set the input audio and output audio on an application-by-application basis. Very cool, and it has instantly replaced SoundSource.

Another gizmo I use that I forgot about is "Mouse Locator" by 2point5fish.com. This little gizmo does one simple thing: when the mouse has been inactive for a specified amount of time, and you move the mouse, it puts a large bulls-eye over the mouse so you can locate it visually immediately. Since I installed it, not once have I lost the cursor on my screen. That, combined with the built-in OS X ability to increase the size of the cursor, has greatly lessened by frustration with moving the mouse round and round in a little circle in order to find the crazy thing.

Digital packrat

I have a 100 GB hard drive in my PowerBook.

I have an 80 GB hard drive in an external enclosure. I use it for long-term, live archives of student work, digital photos and other things.

I have a 60 GB hard drive in an external enclosure. I use it for daily backups of my documents and applications folders.

I have 20 CDs and DVDs with digital photos that I've taken.

I have 30 other backup CDs and DVDs.

I have an information bank on my computer with 100 MB of text information gleaned from newsgroups, email, etc. all about computer programming, running servers, computer software, etc.

I have several huge websites.

I have 421 little notes/memos on my PDA about all kinds of things, ideas I'm working on, things I don't want to forget, little informational tidbits, etc.

Who is ever going to look through this stuff when I'm gone?

Who is ever going to know the programs on my PowerBook and how to use them efficiently when I'm gone?

Who is ever going to know how to run my server when I'm gone?

Who will take care of my websites? Who will care what I've written in my blog?

No one. No one will care about my photos, my programs, my server.

But that's fine with me because all of these things enhance the quality of my life. Occasionally I cull stuff out. Occasionally I consolidate. Occasionally I compile.

There's little difference between this kind of digital packratting, having 5 or 6 file drawers or boxes filled with clippings, or having drawers and shelves filled with occasionally-used tools. In fact the analogy is quite close, in my opinion. One type of packratting is analog, the other two are digital. I'm pretty good at the analog kind--my files and workbench are fairly neat. I'm getting better at the digital kind--tools are improving, I'm getting better at keeping things organized. There's a sense of satisfaction in being able to lay hands on the information or tool whenever I need it for my work or recreation. In fact, I am immensely satisfied when I can search at will for information and lay hands on it within seconds or minutes.

It's a lot of fun.

My Favorite OS X Gizmos & Gadgets

There are some software and hardware gizmos for OS X I can't do without. Some are free, as noted, and some are shareware which I have paid for. I always pay for shareware I use. Here are the top 7.

1. XMenu adds a menu to the menubar that can be configured however you like with folders aliases & file aliases. I don't have to run to a finder window and access the Applications folder to find any app I want to run. I like to have a list of aliases of my most-used apps, and then aliases of my most-used folders (like Documents), for handy access. Freeware, from devon-technologies.com.
2. iSeek from ambrosiasw.com. Allows you to define searches that can be accessed from your menu bar. Kind of like Spotlight for the Net. Shareware.
3. SoundSource from Rogue Amoeba Software. This handy gizmo allows you to switch between input sources and output destinations. Handy if you have things like a Griffin iMic and a powerbook, where you might have the iMic plugged in with speakers attached, or a mic in the iMic, or you might be completely portable and want to use the internal speakers and the internal mic. Plays well with the Sound preferences pane in System Preferences. Freeware.
4. Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard. I have a 5-button mouse (actually, 2 of them, one for home and one for work). The Microsoft Mouse preferences panel is outstanding for allowing you to control the mouse buttons and functions.The Microsoft Wireless Ergonomic Keyboard is also outstanding. I don't use the wireless mouse because it doesn't have forward and back buttons for browsing, which I find indispensible on the mouse. The Mouse is Intellimouse Optical 1.1A USB. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but they got this one right.
5. TinkerTool and TinkerTool System. Indispensible. TinkerTool is freeware, TTSystem is shareware. Highly recommended for both setting hidden systems prefs and settings, and for performing periodic system maintenance. By Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme.
6. Synk. I don't hear much about this backup utility, but I find it performs flawlessly for what I need. I need to be able to plug my external hard drive in and backup certain folders. I need to be able to either archive the changes or throw them away. I need it to work in the background. Works perfectly. From http://www.decimus.net/synk/.
7. There's a little gizmo that I have forgotten the name. It's somewhere on my hard drive. But what it does is so important. It switches the function of apple-N and shift-apple-N in the Finder. When I remember where it is, I'll post it.

That's it. My top 7. Enjoy.

Managing info Digitally

I used to have all my little "pieces of info" on pieces of paper, spiral notebooks, etc.

Then I graduated to a Franklin Planner, and used that during the mid-80s well into the late 90s.

Then I got a PDA and incorporated all that into my trusty Handspring Pro, which I still use. I wore out my first one, I'm on #2.

Managing information in my computer is another issue. I've tried several things--word documents, FileMaker Pro databases, Entourage, and now a nice program called "DevonThink Pro."

All those emails I want to save, bits and pieces of info related to education, business, personal, etc. all are stuffed in a DevonThink Pro database. It's 100 MB but now it's finally all consolidated (been working for some months). I still have a few things to sort and split (to transfer from FM Pro to DevonThink it was necessary to export multiple records as long text files, and now they have to be re-split into records). Ah well it give me a chance to cull out unimportant/outdated stuff.

DevonThink Pro is by devontechnologies.com.

Cinnamon update

I have faithfully been taking two 600 mg tablets of cinnamon morning and night (2400 mg/day) for a little over a week now.

On 10/11 my blood pressure was 114/66. It is about the same now. So far, then, no big blood pressure change.

The other measure that may be affected by cinnamon is the cholesterol. I will have it tested in a couple of months, trying to keep most everything else the same, and we'll see what happens. I have my new blood pressure medicine (Zocor), but haven't started taking it yet.

Digital Rituals/Digital Lifestyle

Look at this list. Am I immersed in digital rituals or what?!?!?

• Check my email, read NYT Headlines email, access interesting articles online & print sometimes for future reference
• Sync my PDA
• Update my PodCasts (Tips from the Top Floor, Just Thinking, Let My People Think, President's Address, LensWork, 2-Minute Photoshop Tricks)
• Backup my hard drive
• Write to my blog (not often enough)
• Check my calendar on my PDA
• Balance my checkbook online
• Pay credit card balance (monthly) via direct transfer
• Look at favorite comics widgets
• Glance at local weather widget
• Glance at CNN news headlines widget
• Glance at midwest precipitation forecast widget

OK, so I don't do all these things every day, but most of them I do every day.

Get Info

Information Overload

I read the morning Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Sunday mornings (that's the only day of the week I get it). First I drag the junk out (like classifieds, real estate, and glossy ads), perusing the front pages of each news section to see if there's anything I want to go back and read later. I see in the Target ad there's an interesting cabinet for sale that will work in my garage, maybe I'll get 3 or 4 of them. Looks like the Wisconsin Badgers win over Minnesota is worth reading, also an article about a guy losing weight. Read the funnies. Throw the junk away.

In my email every day, I receive the New York Times headlines email: Top stories, International, National, Washington, Business, Technology, Editorials, and Op Ed. I always look over the headlines and today's interesting Op Ed was about finding an original, long-lost Beethoven manuscript. I clicked the link and went to the NYT website. It didn't have enough info, so I typed "Grosse Fuge" manuscript into Google and found the main NYT article that showed a media slideshow with narration and photos of the manuscript.

At breakfast I read a Daily Bread devotional, and one from the Institute for Creation Research. That one's pretty interesting to me, it's about Jesus as teacher.

Now I finish my breakfast, back at my computer, and flip over to my OS X Widgets and read over my favorite comics. I use the very cool WIMIC widget to view: B.C., Rose is Rose, Garfield, Wizard of ID, Animal Crackers, Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, Foxtrot, Frank & Ernest, and a couple of others.

While I am looking at my widgets, I notice the precipitation map shows we probably won't have rain, and the weather forecast widget says maybe rain tomorrow. I click on the CNN Headlines widget to refresh the headlines, and note thankfully that the votes in Iraq are being counted. None of the headlines interest me enough to click on them, so I'm done with that for the time being.

All this before 7:30 am.

Our player piano

This is about our player piano.

My in-laws were given this piano (a Wurlitzer-Kingston player), as close as I can tell, somewhere around 1946. They were building their house in Syracuse NY right after the war and one of the neighbors came by and asked them if they wanted it. My in-laws said yes, so they all rolled the piano down the street on pipes, then alongside the house and into the basement. There it stayed for 50 years. My wife remembers as a kid playing the piano rolls. I came into my wife's life around 1980, and when visiting her home, I went to the basement occasionally to tinker with the piano. A little oiling, cleaning, etc. confirmed that it was still a working player.

My father-in-law decided they needed to do some basement cleaning in the mid-80's, and they asked us if we wanted the piano. We did, so we drove to NY with a UHaul to pick it up. Once we got it back home to Detroit, the first thing I did before anything else was to strip and refinish it. It had been painted chocolate brown. After refinishing, it is a beautiful mahogany. Unfortunately I could not save the Wurlitzer decal on the keyboard cover.

Now to the restoration. For years I tried patching with various combinations of cloth and rubber cement without much success. I got the piano working about 50-60% of what it should be. The air motor did not turn smoothly, and many of the keys did not play crisply. So the real problem was that the motor bellows and the key bellows were leaking, and the paper/cloth needed to be replaced.

Well, we moved to Wisconsin from Detroit, and we brought along another of my wife's inherited pieces, a metal porch swing. I stripped and painted it, and we decided we wanted a cover for it. From one of the gardening magazines, we ordered an all-weather cover. When the cover came, lo and behold, it was made of a lightweight, flexible, dense fabric (I still don't know the name of it) but to all appearances it looked to me to be the perfect fabric for rebuilding my piano. And the cover came in its own bag made of the same material, and there was plenty of fabric in the bag for the job. First I tried repairing the motor, using contact cement and this new fabric. It worked! The motor started running perfectly smoothly, with no erratic turns or dead spots. Wow.

So, during Memorial Day weekend in maybe 1998 or so, I took the whole player unit to my workshop and rebuilt 90% of all the 88 bellows. Some of the lower and upper bellows didn't need replacing, but most did.

Wow, once I replaced those bellows and worked on a couple of other linkages that were leaking air, did the player play nicely! Very crisp runs! Wonderful.

Sorry I don't know what that fabric is called, but it worked perfectly. It was a miracle.

Just found out that replacement fallboard decals are available. I'll get a replacement and also get some replacement knobs and rubber bumpers and felt soon.

Fixing the bass bridge on my piano

We have a player piano. I love it, it's great! Wurlitzer-Kingston (or is that Kingston-Wurlitzer). Made around the turn of the century (as in 1900, not 2000). I've restored it to about 95% completely functional. Someday I'll give you the details on my restoration.

One thorny problem has been the bass bridge, which has nothing to do with player action, it's part of the Kingston piano. The bass bridge, for those of you who don't know, is a curved bar of wood about 2 1/2 inches high and about 1 inch thick and about 1 foot long. The strings for the lowest notes on the piano are stretched across it in a slight arch, pressing the bar into the piano's sound board which amplifies the sound of the vibrating string. If the bass bridge is poorly installed, damaged, or poorly constructed, then sound from the whole lower range of the piano will be poor.

Where the strings stretch across the bar, they are also threaded between two pins, forming sort of a elongated "Z". The 2 pins are each angled toward the string, and fitted very snugly in holes in the bridge. Over time, because of humidity, dryness, age, sideways pressure of the strings, etc. the pins can loosen and even split the wood, again resulting in poor bass tone.

About 40 pins on mine were seated in split holes.

What to do?

Well, my dad was a carpenter of sorts, and a few years ago he took the original bass bar and duplicated it using a piece of oak and some of his woodworking tools. The result was fairly good but not perfect. There are three important dimensions: the bridge must make perfect flat contact with the sound board, the strings must zig zag between the pins; and the strings must make contact with the wood of the bridge at precisely the same point as they make contact with the pin, which means the bridge is beveled crisply across the pin holes. Getting those three dimensions right was a challenge: some of the strings didn't zig zag enough because of imperfect hole positioning, some of them were touching the wood/pin inconsistently, and I don't think the contact with the sound board was perfect. But I had his improvised bridge installed for quite a few years, and we have had lots of fun from from the piano.

A few weeks ago I started researching the issue, and found these options: (1) have the bass bar duplicated by hand (fairly expensive) (2) have it replaced with a generic blank (not as expensive but not as good and (3) repair it with slow-setting epoxy. I talked with a fellow online about having it duplicated and he didn't want to mess with it. So I decided to give epoxy a try. Step by step, here's what I did:

• I bought some slow hardening epoxy from Ace
• I mixed up an ounce at a time
• I used a wire to poke the epoxy down the hole where the wood around the pin was cracked or deteriorated
• I rubbed some vaseline on the pin and poked it firmly down into the hole
• The cracks were at the top, on the surface of the bridge, so when the pin poked down, it settled into place with the right position and at the right angle
• I made sure the epoxy was mounded up around the pin above the surface of the wood in order to have solid reconstruction of the area around each pin's hole
• I worked my way all the way down both sides of the bass bridge
• There were about 10 holes that were solid and didn’t need any epoxy, the rest I epoxied
• After the epoxy had set but not hardened, I used vise grips on each pin, gave it a little twist and pulled it out
• The next day after fully hardening, I used my orbital sander to flatten the mounded epoxy
• Then I used a small sander attachment on my Dremel (about 3/4 inch diameter) to sand the proper bevel across each hole or pair of holes
• I had a couple of holes I had to re-epoxy
• Finally after curing a day or two I installed it in the piano, inserted the pins (used a clamp to move each string sideways enough so I could insert the pin straight in its hole) and tuned it up
• Result: sounds really good across 3/4 of the bridge, from the low end up
• The upper end of the bridge I don’t think is seated firmly on the sounding board, the strings don’t resonate as well (there were three dowels for the bridge to set on and keep it in place, and the upper pin is broken so the bridge seems to be a bit off location at the upper end)
• I did not glue the bridge down (yet)
• So far there's been no sign of failure

Since getting this far, I have received some advice about how to fix the tone across the rest of the bridge. Basically I need to screw, bolt, or glue the bridge down firmly to its mount. I'll post an addendum to this blog when I have accomplished that.

Testing Cinnamon

After researching the benefits of cinnamon on cholesterol and blood pressure, and having high blood pressure (I take Diovan) and high cholesterol despite leading a fairly active lifestyle, reasonable weight, and eating pretty well, and since the good doctor gave me a prescription for Zocor, I thought I'd give cinnamon a try.

I purchased several bottles of 600 mg cinnamon tablets. I take two in the morning and two at night, for a total for 2400 mg per day. I've been taking it for a week on this regimen.

My normal blood pressure with Diovan is in the neighborhood of 115/75, which is good. So far preliminary blood pressure readings have been in that range. Today's reading was 114/63. One person on the Internet claims that with cinnamon plus Diovan their blood pressure dropped low enough to cause them some problems so I'm monitoring it closely.

I'm going to take it for two months until my supply is gone, keep my diet etc the same, then go to the doctor to have my cholesterol checked. I'm comfortable with the Diovan, but I'm a little leery of adding Zocor on top of it. My latest cholesterol reading with fasting and eating oatmeal every morning was total 258 LDL 190 tri 115. Will keep you posted.

Life is busy

• Up at 5:45 am
• Make a cup of coffee (with cinnamon--I'm exploring whether cinnamon can help my blood pressure and my cholesterol level)
• Check my email
• Grade a set of quizzes and record them in my spreadsheet
• Check new link from college intranet to college Outlook calendar from home, doesn't work
• Access college email from home, figure out why calendar doesn't work
• Fire up GoLive, make the URL change, test, works now (needs https not http)
• Drop an email to IT administrator about accessing Outlook from home
• Look at Land's End catalog for dark gray pants (Year 'Rounders)
• Look up bulk pecans on Internet
• Look up bulk ground cinnamon on Internet
• Found interesting website on world's healthiest foods, read about cinnamon
• Went online to try to figure out how many milligrams in a teaspoon (one cinnamon source said 5000 mg per day--how many teaspoons is that?)
• Emailed the URL to Cindy (http://www.whfoods.com/)
• Fired up my old information database in Filemaker Pro and transferred all the graphics from it to DevonThink Pro--all done
• Deleted old information database
• Started this blog
• Accessed Lands End website, created & modified My Model
• Selected dark charcoal heather wool year 'rounder pants; tall long sleeve 60/40 buttondown pinpoint shirt; not ready to order yet ($100 total)
• Checked blood pressure
• Hotsync'd my PDA
• Ate breakfast (oatmeal w/brown sugar & cinnamon, 2 1/2 strips of bacon, water)
• Read the morning paper
• Checked email
• Fired up Interarchy, new version available, downloaded & installed, logged in to intranet, downloaded new projectsoft manager directories
• Set up a GoLive file to manage the projectsoft application on the intranet; found out permissions aren't quite right, emailed tech support
• Got an emailing ready to send assignments back to T & M class
• Studied Adult Bible Fellowship lesson for tomorrow
• Worked on requirements for garage wallboard & insulation
• Updated podcasts on my iPod
• Got dressed & ready to work outside (10:00 am)
• Worked outside
• Picked tomatoes
• Pulled weeds from the lawn
• Used the edger to cut checkerboard grooves 1' apart in the lawn to admit water and fertilizer; applied fertilizer (1/3 of lawn done)
• Spoke w/contractor re: insulation and wallboard in garage
• Cleaned up the garage some in preparation for wallboard
• Ate lunch
• Unloaded wallboard & insulation w/contractor
• Mowed 1/3 of lawn
• Picked beans, broccoli, raspberries
• Cleaned the beans (Kentucky Wonders)--they're dried for soups while watching an afternoon movie
• Wrote check for contractor
• Ate supper (chili & corn chips & zucchini muffins!)
• Showered & shaved
• Went to violin recital
• Researched on the Internet for a replacement piano bass bar for our player piano
• Watched TV with my wife

Back from Peru, School's Started, Home Jobs

Peru was busy. Two weeks of teaching. Registered and developed arribaperu.org. Took a lot of great pics of people in Lima:












Maybe upload more later.

Back from Peru, long but safe trip. Started faculty inservice immediately.

Wow, what a hurricane down South. Iraq drags on. Go Judge Roberts!

Cleaned out my garage--going to put up wallboard and a pull-down stairway.

Worked on the new side flower garden. Moving flowers/plants away from the house, putting in a stone path, grouping roses together.

Fresh raspberries every day! Fresh veggies for supper every day! I love this time of year.

Adult Bible Fellowship lessons are on the book of Joshua. Lesson 2: Rahab. Good stuff.

Brother in law visiting from Phoenix, bringing new wife to visit and meet us. Nice time last evening at Mom's with them.

In Peru

Well I'm down in Lima for my teaching assignment, "Media-Enhanced Speaking." Actually it's Media-Enhanced Communications. We cover communication, visual design & displays, transparencies, photographic composition, PowerPoint presentations, and digital video. All in two weeks. So far so good with all my gear, it seems to be all working ok. I even resurrected one of the student's ailing laptop. It was freezing up randomly. Took the memory chip out, cleaned the contacts with a pencil eraser, then inserted it into the laptop in the cleanest slot (the one it was in was kind of dirty). It worked, and she was thankful.

I need to learn some more Spanish beyond "como esta usted" "muy bien y usted" "muy bien gracias." Gotta get those Spanish tapes out...

Getting Ready for Peru

I'm getting ready for my teaching trip to Peru. This is my third time, so I pretty much know what's going to be happening.

There are three students this year. Their names are Katie, Crystal, and Aaron.

Here are their blogs:

Katie
Crystal
Aaron

Where angels fear to tread

Well I took the plunge, tore apart my PowerBook G4. I had instructions from PBFixit.com. Excellent instructions. Showed pictures with little colored circles showing what screw to remove. Every time I took a little screw out I taped it to the paper.

No problem getting the hard drive out--basically remove the keyboard and top cover, and there you are. But the optical drive was a different matter. In fact, I couldn't do it. When I got to the step where I was supposed to remove two spring-loaded screws to release the heat sink, I couldn't get one of them out. It was sort of a hollow thing that screws onto a threaded post underneath. One of them came out fine, but the second would only loosen. It would not come off. So I was stuck. Ah well it all went back together ok and I'm up and running with a new 100 GB hard drive.

I put my old one into a little "FireXpress" hard drive case "slim storage by CompuCable". Such a nice little aluminum case. I put the new 8x dual layer DVD burner into an external "Digistor" case. Both are so nice and compact.

Oh yeah when I first got the hard drive and case, I put the new one in the external case, and then used Disk Utility to "restore" my old hard drive onto the new hard drive. Then I tested that it would boot ok, which it did. Then I swapped the hard drives. Slick as a whistle.

These small external media cases are so cool.

Oh yeah I forgot to say I also bought some audio stuff--an iMic by Griffin. Nice piece of hardware, provides improved quality of output over the built-in headphone jack (at least it seems that way to my untrained ears), and also provides low level and line level microphone inputs. That will be nice because I'm still working on digitizing my LP and cassettes.

Bought a nice little microphone on eBay. It's basically just a gold-plated 1/4 inch plug with a microphone mounted in the end and a wind-screen. I think combined with the iMic it will provide high quality audio input to the computer.

Stuff I did today 7/8/05

1. Ordered my hard drive
2. Tried to order DVD writer, online process didn't work, will have to call
3. Ate breakfast, made a cup of coffee
4. Showered & dressed
5. Went to work
6. Watched the Ken Ham video for next week's ABF class.
7. Went online and printed the instructions for changing my hard drive and DVD.
8. Printed and tallied distance ed course evaluation feedback.
9. Made spreadsheet for distance ed course feedback, graphed data, printed out, dropped copies off for the boss.
10. Called mwave.com and straightened out the order that didn't process--it got stuck on the "verified by visa" step, probably something Firefox didn't like.
11. Fired up Adobe GoLive and fixed a couple of typos on my online course evaluation page.
12. Ate a piece of blueberry coffee cake. Heh.
13. Set up a link in the Finder to connect from my laptop to my Windows desktop machine.
14. Went online and ordered a hard drive enclosure for the drive I will pull from my PowerBook. Should I order an enclosure for the DVD writer I pull? Hmmm. $50 from mp3car.com, looks nice.
15. Transferred a font from my Windows machine to my PowerBook, and installed it with Font Book.
16. Modified several pages on the school web site to have updated brochures.
17. Gave some instructions to a new client on my server how to set up his email.
18. Listened to Calvary Quartet all morning.
19. Talked with Jim about the school website and fixed up a page for him
20. Went home for lunch with my wife
21. Added some info to a page on the school website
22. Checked out stampauctionnetwork.com for any interesting 1909 commems--hm there's a nice 367 FDC mailed 2/12/09 at 8 am, and also a 370 plate/imprint block, nice.
23. Started up an iTunes podcast, an interview with a fellow from Google. He worked on Google Earth and mentioned the URL.
24. Downloaded Google Earth from earth.google.com and played with it for a while. It crashed once but I zoomed in on my area, and my sister's house was in one of the higher resolution scans. Kewl.
25. Listened to a couple of podcasts "Tips from the Top Floor" (digital photography)
26. Ordered the Slimline DVD enclosure w/FireWire/USB interface. Should be cool.
27. Worked for a good share of the afternoon without interruption on some academic achievement statistics, recalculating some percentiles and graphing them out.
28. Made a cup of coffee
29. Read an http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/08/london.muslims/index.html?section=cnn_topstories article about the Arab world reaction to the London bombing.
30. Handled a mis-directed phone call.
31. Almost time to go home. Maybe I'll read a bit on my PDA while I enjoy my coffee. I'm reading "The Clue of the Twisted Candle" by Edgar Wallace.

Upgrade season

Well, we're in upgrade season. I've ordered a new 100 GB drive for my PowerBook G4 from eBay, got a good deal for $175 for a brand new Seagate.

Now I'm working on ordering a new DVD burner, 8X dual layer for the PowerBook, too.

Will also pick up an external hard drive enclosure to hold the old hard drive from the PowerBook. Might as well use that 60 GB. Not sure if I'll get an enclosure for the old DVD burner, I just might and then sell it.

Installation. That's another matter, fortunately there are some good instructions online.

I like ecto.

Trying out "ecto"

I just downloaded a Mac blogger client called "ecto." Setup was pretty easy, I just pointed it to my account and it made the connection without any problem. I'm typing this with the "rich text" option--looks like I have options for alignment, tabs, bullets, numbering, italics, underline, bold, strikethrough, colors, and background color.

Looks like a nice little gizmo. Here's a nice capability--it interfaces with iPhoto, iTunes, and Amazon.com. Hm but I selected iPhoto and then a photo and then clicked "import" but it didn't... After looking at the help, I don't think my blogger account is the right kind to allow it.

Well sometime I will set up a directory on my server and show you some of my fractal screenshots that I use as wallpaper on my iBook desktop.

--Steve

Information Flow

Talk about swimming every day--my life is a constant swim in information. I can't even begin to tell all the times today I have interacted with information. Email. Web. Paper. Phone. Network files. Spreadsheets. PowerPoint. Digital video. Let's see:

1. I transferred our entire Intranet to my PowerBook so I could burn a DVD for backup. We had a bad experience with a power outage and email, so I'm playing it safe.
2. I exported several of my students' iMovie projects to Quicktime so I could show them in class.
3. I interacted with Ray regarding why Entourage won't/can't access the LDAP email server.
4. I checked my bank balance online and scheduled a couple of payments.
5. I searched for a photo of the new Mercury Milan.
6. I searched online for a photo of an iPod shuffle for my class presentation.
7. I looked up the FEMA website that offers the book Taking Shelter From the Storm for free for a friend.
8. I received a payment on account for my server business via PayPal.
9. I interacted with the fellow who does my DNS for all my domains about the proper way to set up my backup mx.
10. I went online to the ***.com website on my server to delete the stupid gambling posts that someone keeps putting on the guestbook there.
11. I went to the IMC to help one of my students who was having trouble getting her iMovie project to record her voice properly using the eMac; and another was having trouble with the volume on a clip on her movie.
12. Gotta debug why when I connect to the net with the wireless connection, why I can't access the web or email.

See you in the EAIC (East Australian Information Current) (hat tip to Finding Nemo)

A Day in the Life of...Me

Well here I am, sorry to say, weeks and weeks overdue. The systems portfolio project has just eaten up all of my spare time since November. But it's finally done, and I'm glad.

Today's work, wow:

1. Added asp code to our Intranet page so the course evaluation percents would show.
2. Loaded the new building pictures into iPhoto, produced web pages, uploaded them to the Intranet, and linked them to the What's New section.
3. Added the link to Shadow of the Cross web pages to What's New.
4. Picked out a nice photo of Shadow of the Cross play, exported from iMovie to 640x480, used Photoshop Elements to oil pastel it and then create strokes frame. Finally exported to web and put it on home page.
5. Fixed the Systems Portfolio spreadsheet with the correct figures, copied the pie graph to the Systems Portfolio, and then did the magic to make it fit nicely on the page.
6. Modified the OIR home page, uploaded it to the server.
7. Found a page of ASP that will display a directory of files, installed it in the old Intranet front page images folder. Then added a link from the Intranet front page image to that page. That way people can browse the old front page images.
8. Worked with a student to figure out why her video was coming out so dark when she imported it into iMovie.
9. Worked on the AAT Liaison assignments for non-instructional departments.
10. Worked with Financial Aid manager on FAFSA survey. Printed 50 bubble forms.
    
11. Worked with Guest Relations manager on survey of dorm students who house campus visitors.
12. Performed emergency recovery on the Intranet front page--who knows why it went AWOL for 10 minutes. I couldn't connect via FTP on the computer lab subnet, so I mailed a copy of it to myself and then restored the file.
13. Talked on the phone with one of my customers to resolve a couple of issues with their web forms.
14. Worked with one of my students in Web Design class who was working on rollover buttons for her MenuMachine web site menu.
15. Sprayed my fruit trees. Watered my flowers.
16. Drank a few cups of coffee. "8 O'Clock" is my favorite so far. Not sure if I'm going to become a dedicated coffee fan, but I'm getting so I an enjoy a good cup. Not black, though.
    
17. Composed and sent an email to IT folks regarding specific incompatibility of Macs w/our Intranet (we have some files that are linked from the Intranet to shared files via the file:/// protocol; this does not work with Mac). Posed three possible solutions, hopefully one might ring a bell and get this last incompatibility resolved.
    
18. Spouted off to my boss about the school calendar that keeps changing without notice of any kind.
19. Wrote a note to my sister asking if the new cordless drill is working out for her.
20. Read some more of the second Left Behind book called Tribulation Force.
21. Tried about 4 times to get through to CSC Credit Services (division of Equifax) to ask about my credit report.

That's about it, and that's enough for one day.

Life goes on

I realized today that my wife and I have celebrated a 25th, and we didn't even realize it--our 25th Christmas together. And this Valentines Day is our 25th one together. That's romantic, eh?

I ordered her a nice necklace and earring set from Novica.com. They have nice stuff from overseas artisans. I bought a mitten/scarf/hat set for my sister-in-law for Christmas last year. The necklace and earrings are from Mexico. Good prices, good service, nice stuff. Somehow affiliated with National Geographic, not sure how.

Finally got my new server up and running. It's doing well, but there is a glitch somewhere, not sure where, to track down. Such is the life of a small-time web site services provider.

Great what's happening in Iraq, huh? Encouraging.

Server Woes

I run a small web hosting company, single server, 15 or so customers, mostly businesses and churches. Server is colocated, some 30 miles away from where I live. That little server has been humming since late 1997, busily serving pages. I probably visited it 10 times physically--the rest of the time I administered it remotely using Timbuktu.

Well, my little server is no more. On Tuesday morning, everything was fine at 6 am, then at 7 am, nothing. Come to find out there was a major water leakage in the building housing my server, and of course the server is in the basement......fortunately, only my power supply got fried because the server box was off the floor, thank you Lord!

Anyway, it wouldn't reboot because when the power supply fried it messed my hard drives. But with a little help from Norton (Norton Utilities, that is), I was able to get them running again. It was flaky, though, and for 24 hours we just sort of limped along on a wing and a prayer.

About 4 months ago I started building a new faster server (the old one runs a 500 mHz G3, this one runs a 1.2 mHz G4) with some very fast hard drives. That was all put together and basically ready to go. So last night I copied the critical files (web sites and email), took the old server down one last time, and fired up the new one.

It's great, working well, no problems so far. It has taken some hours of work to restore settings, connections, etc. I still have a few things to go but basically we're online again. Could have been MUCH worse. And boy is the new one zippier!

Time flies like an arrow

What can I say? It's been a month and a half. In that time I have closed my teaching semester, took some time off for Christmas vacation, and gotten the new semester up and running. Gotta get back to blogging. I have some things to say. Stay tuned.