So I've been a bit busy lately, apologies to anyone who's had to interact with me (or sometimes tried to do so). I'm really not trying to ignore anyone... I realized just how ridiculous it's been when I was working on my weekly report, and it got rather long just with the bigger things from the week. For my sanity's sake, other than one annoying 6 day week and one nice holiday week, I'm working 3 or 4 day weeks for the rest of the year. Unless something comes up, but I better get a free vacation out of that... As a side effect, it'll probably mean busier Mondays as I've finished completely segmenting my work and personal email accounts and made separate profiles in Thunderbird, so I won't even see things sent to my work account piling up and be tempted to do anything over the weekends. Probably a good thing though, at least i people stop sending non-work stuff to my work address (hint - it can be safely removed from your address books for those not sending me work stuff).
I finished out last weekend by rearranging the house with some new (to me) furniture and electronics. If you know me, you should come over some time and see it. Today involved taking pictures of Soccer, and then sitting around. Hopefully the rest of the weekend will be doing nothing, although maybe I'll post pictures from both last and this weekend. Realizing I don't have my camera with me nearly often enough, I did end up looking at cameras online though, seeing what's new in the pocket camera world. I somehow neglected to notice that Canon has Elphs with decent resolution, IS and DIGIC II. And there are second-gen ones out, so the first-gen are cheaper. Such choices...
Sony Bravia seems to definitely be going for the feats-of-engineering ads. Their latest involves what's effectively paint fireworks, both inside and outside. While not the funniest, this and the balls one from a few months back are definitely ones that leave me wishing I could do that, or at least have watched it in person.
I took a couple vacation days. Only two for now, but at least it's a start. I can't say I just sat around the house though, although I'm sure there will be plenty of that tomorrow... Thursday I finally got around to fixing the front speakers in my car. Physical forces had broken the tweeters off the original mountings, causing them to rattle between the woofer cone and the cover. Not good for the cone or the sound. I had pulled out one a year ago (intending to put it back in a better location), and the second broke a week or so ago, so it was time to actually fix them. So I spent a few hours rearranging stuff inside the door and spent some time with the drill, and now have it sounding great. Finished it off with breaking out the SPL meter, although I should really add an equalizer and do it right. Unfortunately I discovered today that the Windows can't go all the way down, so I need to fix that. I don't really ever open them though, so it may be a long time before I bother fixing that.
Despite it being past-peak for fall colors, today I went and took some pictures. I spent a few hours wandering around some state parks a bit south of the metro, which also involved a few hours of driving (so yesterday's work was appreciated). I also was reminded the not-so-fun way that especially after several miles of trails, I'm not in appropriate shape to take a climb (it was a trail, but involved stairs and switchbacks with less steep stairs) over 400 feet down the river bluffs from the parking area to the lake surface. Actually the climb down wasn't that bad (although the grade was such my toes weren't happy), but the climb up was definitely not fun. Especially since I didn't think I'd be going far and didn't bring water (bad move). That made it so I didn't get to take other pictures I wanted before the sun was down either (both from time and I could barely move even if I wanted to to so). Such is life though, and now I'm too tired to deal with copying/posting pictures until later. At least I'll sleep well tonight, although tomorrow probably won't be fun.
Fitting post for the first day after schdav ditched us... For those that remember his rant about fast food tray busing signage, BK has apparently answered. The question now is whether this is sufficient signage to comply with the terms of his rant.
Proposed order for ICANN to suspend spamhaus.org domain. If that happens a lot of people will be upset about the large increase in junk mail they receive. An interesting perspective on the case is here.
Ah, the joys of Linux. Not exactly something you want to see your server (or any computer for that matter) say...
I recently decided I needed a vacation for sanity purposes. For various reasons I figure I'll take a few days off now, and then a little later plan something bigger. Then I take a look at my leave information and realize I'm way too close to the limits. Long story short, in order to not lose anything or use semi-questionable practices to push it off (aka using vacation time on holidays and banking the holiday time), I'm taking 3 weeks worth of various leave time in the next few months. And then I'll still have over 4.5 weeks of vacation time, some of which will need to be used quickly. So I need to decide on something interesting to do. Any good ideas?
As most of you probably know or have noticed, I have a random quote at the bottom of the pages of my web site, including my browser's home page. Anyways, last night this quote attributed to Edward Murrow came up, and it reminded me of all the political ads that have been on recently. Then tonight I saw more ads and I thought of how appropriate the quote is right before elections.
When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
