Saturday - Riley the picky cat has
acquired new and unpleasant habits. Rather than eat when the automated
feeder beeps and dispenses he simply waits, and bothers me later. Since
I'm home a lot more now it is an effective method - it's hard to out
wait a cat. I've reduced the amount dispensed by the machine, so the
other cat may lose a bit of weight now - currently he looks a bit like
a tribble when laying down.
The Oakland A's won, again. The Padre's defeated the Giants yesterday,
so Barry Bonds is still trying for run number 660.
I still need to do the state tax return.
My friend Tim says that he didn't "find" the watch, but was actually
picked up in Russia as a souvenir by his parents about ten years ago.
Friday 9 April 2004
Friday - the federal
return is done so I can take a breather. I bought some flowers for the
front yard but I just don't have time to plant them yet.
A friend brought over a PC I'd built for them a few years back - it has
problems. It is one of three D815EEAL systems I built at about the same
time. Interestingly all three are reported by their owners to be
failing. I suppose they (computers) have a finite lifetime, my old ABIT
BP6's have failed as well, though this ancient 266Mhz Toshiba laptop is
still chugging along.
She cautioned me not to "look at anything", apparently afraid that I
might snoop for personal details. Hey, I've been a system administrator
for fifteen years and built, debugged and upgraded more computers than
I care to think about: I don't want
to know!, believe me!
Thursday 8
April 2004
Thursday
- still working on taxes. Bah.
Looking at the old barbecue handle I realized that I need to
countersink the screw heads. If not the user may very well get a nasty
burn, because the other end of the screw fastens to the inside
of the barbecue. Frankly I was surprised to see that level of detail in
an offshore product, but I suppose product liability is a great
inspiration.
A close up of the watch.
Wednesday 7
April 2004
Wednesday - started on the taxes. I had
forgotten some stuff I did last year that
are going to make things a bit more work this year. Oh
well.
My friend Tim found a watch for me the other day, an interesting find.
It is apparently a Russian wrist-watch, celebrating Yuri Gagarin's
first orbital flight. Yuri's
Night is coming up soon, the Monday of April 12th, by the way.
Tuesday 6 April 2004
Tuesday - did a bit around the house. I
put up the numbers on the front of the house - brass letters. At one
time I had some nice ceramic letters, but they seem to have vanished,
so brass it is. And started on making a new handle for the barbecue -
it fell over in a wind storm and broke the old one last year. It's a
two foot piece of 1" by 2" wood, that needed to be sanded, drilled,
stained and varnished.
Monday
5 April 2004
Monday - looking at code. It was really
quiet outside - and this is supposed to be Easter Spring break.
Rather windy as well.
I'm still thinking about the OpenBSD firewall box. It makes sense for
us, but I know that like all things linuxish it will exact a toll
on me in installing and configuring. On the other hand, using
TELNET and FTP is a mugs game for work stuff. And of course the
3.5 release comes on May 1, so why not
wait? On the other hand, why not be prepared and practice before then?
Sunday 4 April 2004
Sunday - a nice day. Overcast in the
morning, and some clouds all day, but nice temperatures and nice
weather to be out working in one's rose garden. I made a start on
cleaning it up, but there is a lot more work to be done. It took
pruning shears to cut away some of the weeds that have grown up over
the winter!
I went out later in the afternoon and bought some flowers, with help
from a knowledgeable friend. Roses are nice but it (the garden) needed
to have a
little more color.
When I booted the Linux laptop it needed no configuration at all, and
found the network immediately. Go figure...
Picture of
the Week
Photo Notes:
The roses are blossoming in my front garden. I didn't get around to
cutting them back, fertilizing them, or applying any pesticides - yet
they grow all the same...
