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Some pictures of the rio "sand" grande. There was no water at all in it, except for what was coming out the water treatment plant outlet. It was a nice walk though. The weather was great. 60s and slightly cloudy.
Lesson for today: Don't plug your laptop into a outlet thats controlled by a light switch, which someone will turn off in the night and run you out of battery.
After a delightfull breakfast of bacon and eggs, we are going to head out and walk along the lack of river that is the Rio Grande.
Well, I had a nifty time in Los Alamos. Got to hang out and visit with dan and jane and vet and danny and dan, fushia and rex the dogs. We lounged around, and visited.
Tuesday around 2pm I headed down to Las cruces. It was about a 4.5 hour drive. Pretty uneventfull. Got in and tkil and chelle and lewis and kurt and alison were there. Kurt made nifty homemade elchiladas. Very yummy. Exchanged some Gifts and played some games and drank some drinks.
Got in fine to los alamos last night. The drive was super uneventfull. Not even any heavy traffic anywhere or problems with road construction.
Didn't get on the net last night because I didn't have my MAC address in dan's access list and also didn't have his wep key. He just locked things down a bit ago to make sure his neighbor didn't use his net. I didn't even get on via a cable that was there because the router locks down wired ports as well. Got it all fixed up and working this morning. Even the openvpn has been nice and happy with it.
Well, handed off dave to go to another foster home this morning while I am out of town. Got everything except for me, my laptop and the dogs packed up in the car and ready to go. Off to lovely Los Alamos for a few days, then down to Las Cruces. Should be about a 7 hour drive to L.A. and then a pretty easy one on tuesday down to Cruces.
Had a delightfull (if solitary) day. Slept in until about 9:30am. Kurt the early riser dog managed to not bug me too much until about 9:30, so I could keep sleeping until then. Ran a bunch of errands and got a bunch of junk around the house done.
Since it's late in december it's time that the walnut brewery has it's "old thumper" barleywine. I try and make it out and sample it at least once. It was quite delightfull this evening. Of course boulder was a big pain to park in, but dinner and the barely wine were good. On the way back from boulder there were a number of people who were going like 50mph on hwy36. I thought I was speeding vastly, but on looking down I wasn't going that fast, there were just a number of people going really really slowly.
I gave the dogs each a greenie when I got home. They sure do love them. It's a pity that they cost piles and piles of money. Would love to be able to give them every day, but it's not to be. :(
Nice quiet christmas. Slept in some (It's hard to sleep in too late when you have critters that want you to get up and feed them and let them out and such). Took the dogs for a nice walk. Got phone calls from my dad and one of my sisters. Baked up some choc-chip cookies and ate far too many of them.
Finished the angel season 2 dvd's. Watched some of the first season buffy dvd's, wow do they all look young. I guess it was seven or eight years ago now.
See! My dogs are cute: dog pics
I would just like to take this chance to point out that my dogs are super cute. They are laying around (as they often do) just looking super cute.
Just had a delightfull dinner: A nice boneless turkey, some mashed potatos and some crescent rolls. The rolls did really well in the convection oven. It browned them nicely and made them yummy and fluffy. All the dogs got greenies to chew on.
Need to determine my plans for tomorrow. Might go and see return of the king or go for a hike or something.
Not much exciting to report on monday. I did stay up until the wee hours finishing a book. It's been a while since I did that. Staying up till 3am is not as fun the next day as it used to be. It was a fun book tho: The 4th Dresden book: Summer Knight. Not some kind of great literary work, but a fun read. Lots of nice twists and turns, good fights and dialog.
I need to go out later today and get food for Xmas eve/day dinners. Since I am staying home this year I get to make my own dinner. Will probably look for one of those turkey breast thingies, and look at doing some cookies or other desert.
Well, the party went quite well. Had a not gigantic, but reasonable crowd. Had some good discussions on various topics. The carmel apple martini's were a big hit. Many of them were consumed. Party finally broke up around 2am or so.
Today I think I will play with computers and watch netflix that have piled up. Don't have to do anything in particular, so I don't think I will. ;)
Need to get my butt in gear and start cleaning up the house in prep for the party tonight. Also need to make some cookies and take stock and see if I have enough finger foody things. Also need to check on booze. I think I have all the martini fixings I need, but not sure about other things. Also need to go and drop off my old microwave and toaster over at colorado homeless families. Busy Busy.
Just your typical friday. Working along trying to get some things installed and some other things upgraded. Should probibly go to the store later and see about picking up stuff to make yummy finger foods for the party tomorrow. As usual, I have no idea how many people will show up. Only a few people managed to reply they will be there, so we will see. I should invite more folks, if I knew any more to invite.
Hurray. Cobalt machines are finally end of lifed. I fucking hate the cobalt raq's. Some clients of ours have them and they are worthless and anoying. They don't ever have security updates, which is a gigantic "kickme" sign on the internet these days. They don't have featurefull software, since they are 10 million versions behind. They have crappy hardware. You can't get their binaries easily. They just suck. Hurray for them getting the axe!
Had a nice time at boulder hacking society tonight. Went and had dinner at the southern sun, then over to caffe sole for wireless and geeking. The wireless there still hates my usb wireless card. Noticed that my laptop has a mini-pci modem in it, and the thought was to try a mini-pci wireless in it and see if it could find it. Convinced john to take the mini-pci out of his thinkpad and let me try it. Turns out tho to do that he needed a "secure torx", so that failed. Oh well, it was a nice try anyhow. Will see about finding another mini-pci to try.
Just got back from The Return of the King. It was quite excellent. I happen to think the third book is the worst of the lot. The Sam and Frodo stuff in there is endless and not very exciting. The battles in the book are good tho. The movie made the Sam and Frodo parts interesting and the battles were cool. Very nice movie. Its a toss up between this and the first one wich was better. Will likely have to see it again, and of course get the deluxe dvd version when it comes out.
Didn't update yesterday because I was messing with my laptop. Got a new 80GB 5400 rpm drive for it. Pulled the old drive out and put the new one in and did a fresh install. I tried to get my old drive working on another machine so I could copy my data off it to the new drive but ran into all kinds of hell. It wouldn't see it at all, or would address it in the wrong way so it couldn't see the partitions. Finally ended up putting it in a machine and booting a rescue cd and bringing it up on the net that way. Managed to pull off my data and get everything configured back the way I like it again. Nice having lots of space.
Tonight is the Return of the King showing. Should be nice. I am looking forward to it.
Just suffered thru The Hulk. Oh my ghod was it bad. Here's some general rants about this fetid pile of parrot droppings. (My apologies to parrot droppings).
Why is it that most recent movies insist on making dialog so soft it's hard to hear it, but making the explosions and other stupidity so loud it breaks your speakers? I guess it gives more dramatic impact to the move, but I find it so annoying that it's hard to describe. When watching the DVD at home I tend to keep a window (yes, I watch moves on a computer) open on my laptop logged into the move machine with the mixer up and ready. I have to turn it up for dialog and down for big boom shit. Fucking Hollywood.
This movie had about 1 dimension. Ok, so you show a cute collage of Bruce growing up in the credits, but that doesn't really make us care about him. There wasn't really any character there. How about some footage of him before he hulked? Why should we fucking care what happens to him? Why?
Granted that the military isn't the smartest thing in the world, but they should be able to learn from their mistakes. Why on fucking earth would they keep trying to kill the hulk when they know that it's just making him madder and madder?
Special effects are fun, but hours and hours of them in a row is boring and useless. Without any kind of a story or anyone we care about at all, special effects just make your move cost more and us madder that we wasted time watching it.
Jennifer Connelly is cute and all, but thats not enough to make a movie. Well, a non porno at least. Of course on one of the irc channels I frequent, the discussion was: What happened with her breasts? She was flat (and very cute) in labyrinth. Then she was gigantic in the rocketeer. Goggle seems to say that she did have reduction surgery, and also lost weight and had a kid. Personally I liked her best when she isn't as endowed.
Why do they always have to make a ending so they can have the opening for the sequel? Christ. I sure hope there isn't a sequel to this craptacular POS.
I had a bottle of wine with dinner and the movie tonight. I should have opened the vodka. Or perhaps the bottle of ever-clear.
Bummer. No snow. Just a bunch of annoying wind. Whats up with that? Many of the last few winters have just been exceptionally mild. Global warming? Bad luck? I don't know, but I wish it would snow more. :(
I'm gonna try and do a cocktail party next Saturday night. Hopefully some people will still be around town and interested. Should have martini's and finger food. Looking forward to it. Anyone reading this that didn't get an invite, drop me a mail and I can give you directions. kevin at scrye.com
Well, back from investico field. It was pretty grueling, but not particularly difficult work. Some observations (in not particular order):
The volunteers/employees at investico park at the Denver Colosseum. Since the check in is done at the stadium, you could in theory take advantage of free parking and shuttle bus by just using it.
There were lots of security drones around, but they were quite low key. I was kind surprised that there was no search or walking through metal detectors. I could have walked in with whatever I could wear no problem. Not sure what checks fans have to go through.
I found it kinda funny that they were talking about being very strict on some things (beer rules mostly), but yet had a list of names of people who were mucky mucks and should be given whatever they want.
So you spent a ton of money for a ticket to a game and what do you do? Stand around and look out the view and wander around. I many times heard my co-workers (who cared more than I about such things) ask someone what the score was and they had no idea.
When I explain to you I can only sell you two beers, don't keep trying to let me sell you a third one. There was this otherwise nice seeming lady that kept trying to get me to sell her another beer. Sheesh.
Our booth ran out of pretty much everything by the end of the 3rd quarter. Some things we started out not having. 6 bottles of water sold out in about 15min before the game. The coke was gone in one of the dispensers from the start, and the other died before halftime. We were thinking it was because it was the last game of the season and they wanted to get rid of as much as possible so they didn't have to deal with it off season.
Broncos games have big spenders. I can't recall the number of 100's I got. Lots of 50's. Carding everyone was I thought a good way to do it. Some of the older folks were very happy to be carded again.
Kinda tired this morning. I had to get up in the middle of the (early) morning and fix a broken client machine. Got it all running and got back to sleep, but it's not the same as getting an non interrupted pile of sleep. Got to get ready to go to the lovely broncos game. I sure hate sports.
Twyla's cut looks somewhat better this morning. Still red and ugly. I put some more antibiotic on it and tried wrapping it again with a bandage and some vet wrap. Will see if it keeps her from licking it too much.
Dinner is in the Crockpot: pork for some nice pork green Chile.
Some pictures for your enjoyment of Twyla's wound and a pussy in the lap. Friday night pictures
Well, I tried to put a bandage and some vet wrap on Twyla's wound, but a few minutes later she managed to move the bandage and uncover the wound, so I took it off. Looking at it in the light it doesn't look like it's too deep. It's on the back of her front right leg, so she can't lick it easily, which is good at least. I guess I will see how it looks tomorrow morning and put some ointment on it. I'm such a hovering greyhound dad.
Used the convection part of the new microwave. It did ok, but it never got past 'preheating'. I guess it takes a really long time to preheat. I put my food in while it was preheating and it cooked it nicely.
In other news Twyla came in from the yard a bit ago holding her leg up. Looked at it and didn't see anything at first glance, but then looked again and saw a cut. About 1-1.5" long on the back of her leg. It might be that it could use some stitches, but at this time of night it would be a wicked expensive emergency vet place, and I think she will be ok without. It's not bleeding, so hopefully some ointment on it and it will be ok.
Exciting morning here: UPS rang the doorbell at 7:30am and woke me up (my new keyboard that I ordered yesterday afternoon came in already... they are fast), then I was in the shower around 8:15 and the power went out. The bathroom is pretty dark with no lights and pretty steamy with no fan. Power was out until about 9:45, which was just long enough for most of my UPS'es to die.
Went up to blug tonight. It was a ok meeting. The folks giving the talk seemed nice enough and didn't push their consulting business too much. Started playing with the new software suspend during the meeting. I probably did about 30 reboots. After tweaking the wireless a bit I managed to get it to where it will suspend and resume fine in single user mode, but once you run X all bets are off. After getting home tweaked with it some more and updated X and the dri radeon driver and the touchpad driver. Got it further along, but it still croaks. Finally sent in a bug report to the software suspend list. Hopefully they can figure something out with it.
In other news I stupidly volunteered to help the greyhound group by manning a concessions stand at the broncos game this Sunday. It looks like it's going to be a big pain. They want you there for a long dammed time, all kinds of rules to memorize. Oh well, it's for the dogs.
Dave the dog just had a near death experience. He was all excited and jumping around because we were going to go on a walk, and he jumped on my laptop keyboard. This made me think about killing him. :) I refrained however. Mostly the keyboard still works, but the s and q keys are really sticky and don't feel right. Ordered a new laptop keyboard from HP, which was a chore. Their parts site doesn't show any parts for my laptop, I had to know it was called something else in their db. :(
Despite getting to go out to the vet (nail trimming) and the petsmart (treat buying) Dave is a hyper pup again today. He really needs lots more exercise than the other two dogs. I guess he is only 2 years old, so has a lot of puppy in him, but greyhounds are usually just mellow. I should ask for a loaner coat for him. He really needs walks, but gets cold super easy. Hope we can find him a nice active family.
The new microwave rocks so far. It has a 'reheat' button. You put your leftovers in it, press reheat and it turns on. According to the manual, it senses for steam. Once it detects steam and a rate for it, it gives you a countdown till it's reheated on the display. I used it tonight and it worked great. Ran for a bit, then gave me around a 30 second countdown until it was done. I ate some of it, and then reheated it again and it gave me about a 15 second countdown the second time (there was about 1/2 as much then). I also cleaned out my old microwave and toaster oven and took them out of the kitchen. I need to look for some place I can donate them to. They are both old, but work ok.
Some pictures for your amusement. The dogs treeing a squirrel. The new microwave installed. The label of the maxwells beer. Enjoy.
Oops. It would help if I posted the link: 2003-12-10 pictures.
Was thinking of having a nice holiday cocktail party sometime. Either this coming weekend or the following one. Anyone who might come to such a thing have an opinion on date for it?
Just got back from labeling the last batch of beer that Jeremy and Archer and I made: Maxwells Demon black Scottish ale. It's not a bad beer. It's pretty amazingly mellow, lots of malt to it...a nice easy drinking beer. Archer made the labels, and they turned out great. Nice picture of Maxwell's demon and a nice motto on them. I look forward to drinking them.
Well, "tomorrow morning" apparently means about 1:30pm. The guy showed up and got to work. First thing was to find the breaker for the hood in the kitchen. This meant turning off various ones until it was off. The UPS on my lovely linux firewall machine that has been up for about 400 days worked fine and went over to battery when it lost power, but then when power came back it kept on going on battery. I didn't think it was the UPS with the firewall, so I power cycled it. Then I got to spend the next bit wondering why I couldn't go anywere on the net because the firewall wasn't up. :( Finally got it all set... but what a pain.
It did indeed start snowing harder after a while. Probably 3-4" here now on the ground. Wish it would snow more, but I'll take what I can get. The dogs had a great time running around in the snow and playing chase. In other news, the snow has delayed the electrician. He said he will be by late afternoon or early evening, or possibly not until tomorrow morning.
Hurray! Finally snowing. Not very hard yet, but I have hopes that it will pick up. I love snow. :)
Got a few things around the house down that I have been meaning to for a long time:
Scavenged a cdrom drive for my test machine and threw all my old drives into it and did a fresh install of fedora core 1 on it. It died a while back and I didn't have any way of booting it to re-install it. Also wanted to check 2 drives I had laying around, a 37GB and a 30GB drive and make sure they are ok before I use them for any data.
And of course it being the season now, got out my Xmas lights and put them up in the window. I guess I could put some on the apple tree in front, but that sounds like way too much work. One of the stands I have is of course broken. The durability on Xmas lights is pretty low it seems like. I remember my parents having some strands they used every year I had been alive and they worked fine. Perhaps some LED ones would have more durability than the old filament kind.
Had a very nice hike on the coal creek trail. The wind started to pick up after a while, at times it was gusting pretty high. There weren't too many people on the trail and part of it was super well maintained. It did just go into an open space and sort of disappear at one end, so I just turned around there and looped back. Some pictures of the trail
I was going to try and use my state parks pass this weekend. It's a very nice day out today as well. 60's and a bit of light wind. Looking yesterday on the colorado state parks web site, I was thinking of going to Barr Lake, but looking again they don't allow dogs on their trails. ;( So, I poked around looking for any trails nearby that might be good to visit. The Coal creek trail in the boulder county open space looks like a good possibility. The web sites for the various open space areas and trails aren't very good or easy to find. Oh well. Off to hike.
Playing around with the RSS feed and XEmacs time stamp functions.
Thanks to jafo. I think I have RSS feeds working with his journal. Time will tell.
Since it's the first Saturday of the month, I took the dogs out to man the table for the Colorado greyhound companions at petsmart. It was super busy and hectic there. Some group was doing pictures with Santa, the horse rescue was there, and some massage place was doing free 5min massage. We got our table kind of in the back, so we weren't in the middle of the chaos. Saw Jackson the great Dane. He comes in every first Saturday to see us. Kurt loves to see him. Pictures here.
Met with a electrician. He can put in a new receptacle and the microwave no problem, but not until Monday. It can wait I guess until then. He also looked over the wiring and found that the hood for the range is connected to the circuit that has the washing machine on it. So, I guess I shouldn't wash and microwave at the same time.
Finally got around to watching the super doper directors cut version of lord of the rings: two towers. Pretty nice. It fixed some problems I had with fiamair. Still bugged by it seeming like they tricked the ents into helping out. The extra minutes were all good and made it seem very nice.
TGIF. Busy again today.
went out and ran some errands this afternoon and the FedEx guy showed up with my new microwave/convection oven. Did he just leave a note and try again Monday? Oh no. Did he leave it with my next door neighbor? Oh no. Did he leave it with a neighbor that lives about 4 houses down the street and just moved in last week and doesn't know anyone? Of course. Luckily she knocked on my door and we managed to get the box in from her house to mine. It's frocking huge. They way over packed it, I guess from fear that it would break. It's this one: sharp r-1870 convection/microwave. I sure hope it doesn't suck. ;)
Pulled down the old fan/hood/light thing. Looks like it's hardwired into the wall. ;( So, I need to put in a new outlet in the cabinet above the stove and remove the old junk there. Perhaps I will hire someone to just do it right. Pictures here: kitchen fun.
Another busy day, but not as bad as yesterday Did a bunch more kernel upgrades and reboots. All but one machine managed to come up correctly after rebooting. Also did rsync updates. They aren't that big a deal though, I don't know anyone running the rsync server. I only use rsync with ssh anyhow.
Too cold to walk the dogs today. I hope dave will understand about not getting a walk. He gets stir crazy sometimes if he doesn't get a walk too often. He's had no trouble settling back into the routine here. Hopefully he won't mind being crated tonight when I am gone all night to hacking society. Beer and Geeking. Two great tastes.
Had a very nice time as usual going up to boulder and drinking beer (southern sun cream stout on nitro) and then geeking at caffe sole. Place was packed since it's close to school finals up there. The wireless there hates my usb wireless, finally gave up and just used a pcmcia card. Got home and had to get a stupid cobalt raq working for a client. Man I hate those machines with a passion.
Whew. Was a very busy day today. Lots of kernel reboots for the stupid brk() bug. Lots of tracking down other problems and taking calls.
Went and picked up Dave. He's his usual bouncing self. I know there must be a home out there for him, he just seems to never get a good break. Has been in two homes so far. In the first one the family was going through rough times and couldn't keep him. The next he had aggression issues with his adopters. He's been great (if energetic) here.
Anyone want a dog? Dave is available
Pretty uneventful day. Worked along, took the dogs for a nice walk. It would have been very nice outside, but was a bit on the windy side. Tonight: cleaning. What fun.
Looks like I get Dave the foster dog back tomorrow.
Back home and back to work today. The dogs were totally worn out from all the travel and pretty much slept the day away (but then thats not too different from most days).
Did some more poking around at clamav. Tried to run it with more debugging, but it locked up again and didn't really provide any more information. Tried to check the lists, but lists.sourceforge.net wasn't answering. Sourceforge has really gotten pretty worthless. Lists don't work, people can't get CVS working, etc. Got the older 0.60 version from Jafo and tried that, but it locked up the same way a few minutes later. Wonder if it's related to how I am calling it: from procmailrc. I guess I will try and submit a problem report to them about it when lists.sourceforge.net comes back up.
Got mailman all working and sent out a invite to a bunch of people that were on my old party list to subscribe to it or not. Even got it to use https://lists.scrye.com/ for the URL for everything. The default invite sure doesn't look that great, and it's not customizable. :( Oh well, we will see who all is interested in being on the list. https://lists.scrye.com/mailman/listinfo/party/ Perhaps this weekend would be a good time to do another gaming party or a cocktail party or something.
Watched the first part of the Decalogue. It was more interesting than I was thinking it would be. Probably will go ahead and watch the rest of them, or at least a few more. The first one was a father/son story, mostly about death. Next I watched Hatred of a minute. It was reasonably well done, but didn't seem to go anywhere. Then, showing just how sick and twisted I can be, I watched Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. Death to Deranged serial killer to a movie about a horse. A nice evening of slacking in front of movies.
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