Month: July 2004

Posted on

getting tired of /.

I started reading slashdot back in ’97. In those days, it was *the* source for tech news. Most of the articles posted were of a really techie nature, and the discussion threads almost always had some nice tidbits to pick up. These days, it’s pretty much flamewars and lame comments.

Feeling the need to better fuel my geek obsessions, I’ve been looking for new places to hang out and get my news. The first place that shows promise is Kuro5hin.org. Apparently it’s run by former /. readers and tries to keep the spirit of what /. used to be about. It is more literate, and the posts are fun again.

Then, this morning, my friend sends me a link to engadget.com. It’s exactly the sort of thing that appeals to me, and just what I needed at this point in my geekiness 🙂

Anyway, life with a little less /. should be good, right?

<EOL>

Posted on

potty training

okay, this is a rant.
<rant>
I really don’t understand why grown, seemingly intelligent people urinate all over the toilet seat and fail to clean up their own mess. Public areas I might understand, since there’s typically not a set group of people that frequent them. However, in a corporate setting, it is simply without explanation.

I mean, really! One spends a significant amount of time in the workplace. Do people only go to the bathroom once per day? Do they think that it’s going to be magically cleaned up for them before they have to go to the bathroom later in the day? Is there such a fear of contact with the toilet seat that it’s unthinkable to raise the seat? Have people not been taught how to wipe up their piss from the toilet seat? What gives?

If someone came to your house and peed all over your toilet seat and didn’t clean it up, you’d be really upset, right? So then why would otherwise intelligent people find it perfectly acceptable to make a mess of the bathroom that they visit probably as frequently as the one in their homes?

Okay, maybe it’s just one person spoiling it for everyone, but then why is it like this in almost every office I’ve ever been in?

What am I missing here?
</rant>

Okay, got that off my chest. Better now.

<EOL>

Posted on

low-level fun…

Man, this is great! I’ve started writing some programs for an embedded microcontroller at work. It has a row of 8 LEDs, so of course, I had to make them light up in the fashion of KITT from Knight Rider. Proving once again that Germans love David Hasselhoff. Man, this is so cool! Haha! A coworker just reminded me: it looks like a Cylon‘s eye, too!
<EOL>

Posted on

losing what I lost

dang! After a weekend of having a picnic, and a birthday party, I seem to have gained the girth back. My pants are a bit tight about the waist. 🙁 Oh well. At least I’m eating better now. Hopefully over time, the reduction and normalization of my eating habits will lead to a decline in weight.

Oh yeah, got a haircut this weekend. I let A2C try her “hand” at it. She did a really good job of it, but I think it’s a little too short in the front. Oh well, I’m sure next time will be better 😉

<EOL>

Posted on

waiting in vain

D’oh! Due to a minor error on the part of the sender, my Soekris box has not arrived yet. The flach card and PCMCIA – CF adapter arrived today, but they’re useless without the box. Well, actually, I can create my OpenBSD distribution so it’s ready when the box does arrive. Well, it’s home I go, then!

<EOL>

Posted on

getting around to things…

Probably about 11 years ago, my french professor told me I should read Vonnegut. She said I’d probably enjoy his dark humor. Well, today, I finally picked up a copy of Slaughter-house Five. I read the first page or two, and it seems really interesting so far.
<EOL>

Posted on

insomnia

Well, I stayed up too late, and now, I’m just up. Can’t sleep, but my body is really tired. Grrr…
<EOL>

Posted on

maximum suckage

That’s the last time I buy a Canon scanner. Doesn’t even have TWAIN drivers. I mean, HELLO! Canon? yeah, the early nineties called and they want you to start using their technology.

I was working on a slideshow for a wedding, and I needed to scan handwriting for the title screen. So, I plugged in my old Canon N1220U to my WinXP box. didn’t work. Well, served me right. I had turned my old WinXP box into a linux box, and turned my Win98 box into my main WinXP box (follow that?). Anyway, silly me thought that a plug-N-Play USB scanner that worked on my other Windows system should work just fine on the new Windows system: I mean, a driver’s a driver, right? Hmmmm, apparently not.
So then I decided to give the scanner a try on my Powerbook. No go. None of the built-in apps recongnize it. Hmm, okay, so I direct my trusty browser over to the Canon site to get the latest drivers. They claim to support it under OSX, but get this, it ONLY WORKS WITH PHOTOSHOP. Device driver??? Sounds like a PS plugin to me. Anyway, so I even tried a few other things like VueScan. no go. It recognized the scanner, but couldn’t open it, and when it did, the app froze. Grrr…

By this time, it was getting late, and I needed to finish this thing rather quickly. So, I go to Best Buy and grab the Canon LiDE-30, thinking, well, I like the quality of the images from the Canon, maybe the newer ones have better support (a quick check on their site reveals that it’s designed to work with OSX). So, I get this scanner back home and install the software. Um, worst. software. ever. It’s some god-awful ugly app that looks like a bad imitation of OSX 10.0, complete with gaudy pinstripes and everything. And, guess what? It STILL doesn’t work with the built-in capture software in OSX. Yeesh.

Okay, whatever, at least now I can scan the photos. Get the project done, but now I have 2 scanners, neither of which I’m completely happy with. Well, at least I’m getting a $30 rebate on the new one.
So, a few months later, and I’m messing around on my Powerbook, and I happen to look at the system profiler. It has a function that lists log entries. for some reason, the console log is taking FOREVER to load up. Once it’s done, it reveals that the log file is 29.5 MB That’s MEGABYTES. What the hey? So I look at the file, and it’s line after line of

Looking for devices matching vendor ID=1193 and product ID=8717
Looking for devices matching vendor ID=1193 and product ID=8718

So, I do a quick google on this log message, and lo and behold, I’m not the only one! Apparently, the scanner starts 2 processes that continuously poll for the scanner. When they don’t find it, they log a message to the console log. Oy Vey.

That’s the last time I buy a Canon scanner.
<EOL>

Posted on

the world is good again

Well, it’s been almost 3 months since I left my old job and started the new one. I must say, it’s a refreshing change. The work is challenging, and the atmosphere is one of learning and discovery. I’m programming again and it feels good. I must admit, though, that I’m a little unsure about my abilities as a programmer. I just haven’t written as much code as I’d like to have by now. However, I’m pretty sure I can write whatever is necessary for this job. Man, I love the challenge of taking an idea and making something real out of it! *sigh* the work world is a happy place once again.