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WEEK 3 2006

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Saturday 21 January 2006

Saturday - I helped to build a house. A friend of a friend is building a house in Tehachapi and was holding a "barn raising" to put up some roof beams. So I went out, in the morning, and stayed until dark. There was a largish group showing up - a dozen men or so, several children and a couple of women. For the most part it was people from Scaled Composites. The ridge beams had been raised by the time I got there, but the rafters needed to be put on the second floor, in place for cutting and later assembly, and I helped out with these.

There were several dozen rafters about 32 feet long, with a half dozen perhaps 40 feet. These were "engineered" rafters, essentially three by three's on either side of a 5/16" particle wood sheer panel, perhaps ten inches in depth. Without a hoist we used the backhoe at first to raise them - then it ran out of fuel. So we used a long rafter as a slide and just pushed the rest up it, one by one, to waiting hands on the second floor.

After this the crowd dispersed. As my friend was staying, and I'd set aside the day anyway, I stayed as well. With the owner we finished sheathing about half of the lower story. An interesting a likable fellow - he had designed and planned the house himself, and with my friends help built it from scratch. And it looks good, well constructed, not some "almost handy" horror.

All in all, a lot of fun. But man was I sore by the time I was home. At which time I realized that I was supposed to show up at the LPAC for a performance. So I did a quick pass through a very hot shower and showed up just a few minutes late for a fun show on "found" postcards from the 1940's, 50's and 60's.

By the time I got home I was more than ready for bed...

Friday 20 January 2006

Friday - not a lot to say. A busy day, and then my brother in law stopped by and we had a nice evening talking and watching bad sci-fi.

Thursday 19 January 2006

Thursday - there is an entertaining thread over at Slashdot entitled "The Backhoe, the Internets Natural Enemy".

The New Horizons mission to Pluto took off today, whizzing by the moon in 9 hours (Apollo took, I think, several days). But it'll take NH years to get to Pluto.

Talked to my friend Tim, who recently bought an external drive for backup - a Buffalo 160GByte unit, that uses USB 2.0. But it's slow. Horribly, terribly, slow. How slow? 8Mbits per second, rather than the 480Mbits per second it is supposed to do. One sixtieth the rated speed. What a piece of junk. Unusable, even for backup. Looking on the web we see a fairly positive review by some magazine, and some really negative reviews by the users. Fry's, of course, doesn't want to take it back, it's been more than 15 days since he bought it. Stay away from Buffalo folks! But then I've heard bad things about Maxtor's "One Touch" drive as well. My Ximeta seems to work well enough, but it's pricey, because of the network port.

True Chuck Norris facts.

Apparently I'm not the only one to find the Burger King commercials creepy.

A joke (via Newmarks Door and TCS):
Man walks into auto parts store. “Can I get a carburetor for a Yugo?” Parts man ponders. “Maybe… if you can throw in some cash with the car.”

The History of Basic. Amusing. [via Geekpress] (But then if it can't be programmed in FORTRAN it probably shouldn't be programmed anyway.) Also a joke:

Two atoms were walking down the street. One said, "Oh no, I think I've dropped an electron!" The other atom said, "Are you sure?" The first replied, "Yes, I'm positive."

Wednesday 18 January 2006

Wednesday - Mexican sugar, or American sugar? There's a difference. Quite possibly the Mexican sugared cola taste is better. I prefer Pepsi, for it's harsher taste, but don't drink it as much any more. Firstly it is hard on my aging teeth. Secondly it is expensive at work - $1.25 for a bottle. Thirdly there was the speech the CEO of Pepsi made - she's entitled to her opinion, and I'm entitled not to buy her product.

A drink viler than Coke: Diet Coke, which is what I had today.

I really need to bring a box of tea bags to work.

Tuesday 17 January 2006

Tuesday - took off early from work - dentist stuff.

The St. Augustine Volcano Observatory page, with webcam. They need a really bright light so you can see the volcano at night.

Monday 16 January 2006

Monday - it's a holiday, so I took the time to catch up with some old friends, after a late breakfast with Dave at Crazy Otto's. I was so full from CO's that I didn't eat again until after 6:00.

Went over to help some friends install a USB printer on an OSX MacIntosh. It's about the first time I've been aware of a PC beating out a Mac for install stuff - on an XP box the printer would have been immediately found, a message to that effect printed, and the printer ready for use. On the Mac we had to go get the drivers, then go find the appropriate drivers somewhere down in a system file, and mess with them, before the laptop working. Odd. But there you go...

Sunday 15 January 2006

Sunday - I missed the Steelers/Colts game, but I did catch the Bears/Panthers game, and it was a good one. And napped.

In the late afternoon Dave stopped by, and we plotted where to hike in the Grand Canyon on our next hike. Looks like there are many more trails than I realized!

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Tugboat on San Francisco Bay.

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