Lee.org

It’s decided. I’m going.

AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

On 5-24-04, I pushed the wrong button.

Tivo had been on the fritz for a couple weeks. You’d be watching a program or moving through the menus and it would make this clicking noise. If it made at least two clicking noises in a row, the screen would freeze for a few seconds or longer. Actually, I had seen this problem a couple years ago when the Tivo was younger. I shut the Tivo off for a day and it got better. I -should- have looked into the problem more thourouly then but it just fell off as a priority.

Well, just before my folks got back from Florida, it died entirely. It would click and get stuck 3 minutes after booting and that would be that. So I had to fix it myself. I was having the normal frustrating time of it… swapping hard drives in and out of my PC. Some would boot, some wouldn’t, depending where they were in the IDE chain. It was a bit frustrating but nothing I couldn’t handle. Until it happened.

I noticed that I had successfully put the Tivo image onto my 200 gig Maxtor drive instead of my 40 gig Maxtor drive. The two look very similar but are very different inside. One drive is a scrap, lying around from…. I don’t even recall where it’s from. The other is my system drive, the one everything is on. Everything. I instantly became very unhappy.

Flash forward 3 full days of recovery time and I’m finally back online. It took days to pull the backups from TJIC’s computer (mini-moral: don’t zip up and send a single 5 gig file as a backup. If there’s an error in retrieving it, you’ll have to fetch the whole 5 gig file over again… which sucks because it takes 20+ hours to move 5 gig over a cable modem.)

I’m still not recovered by a long shot. For example, I’m writing this blog using notepad instead of Frontpage because [deep inhale] since I was going to try out the new Office 2003, I figured it would be good if I installed it fresh on the “new” computer; all is well except that Outlook 2003 Pro apparently doesn’t come with Frontpage but MS Word as an HTML editor. Trouble with that is that Word vomits all over my HTML with idiotic MS formatting shit (it vomits shit, now that’s a pretty picture). I also installed VMware workstation and it works peachy except eMule won’t stay online. And I’ve got nothing going on in my life except what I make of it and I’m sitting in my parents basement doing nothing with my life. But that’s just me.

My parents arrived and prompty went to the store and bought duplicates of every food item in the house. Which wouldn’t be so bad except:

• I asked them multiple times not to do this very thing before they came home, the day they arrived and subsequently.
• I spent $250 filling the kitchen with exactly the foods they wanted and then pointed out that the kitchen was full.
• Now, the cupboards are so full that (and this has happened many times in the past) they won’t be able to find what they’re looking for and they’ll buy EVEN MORE duplicates
• Much of the duplicates of food they bought will spoil after sitting in the fridge for weeks.
• I spent much of the winter eating foods I didn’t particularly care for in an effort to rid the house of duplicate foods before they spoiled. Next winter (if I’m here) I’ll barter/give the food away to friends instead.

I had planted several things from seed, anaheim peppers, hungarian peppers, nasturtium, Sweet 100’s tomatoes, and morning glories. I asked my dad what the proper time to plant was and he replied “they have to go in the ground May 15th.” So, in an effort to grow early, I put all the plants under lights starting April 6th. Well, as any gardener will tell you, I planted a month too late for planting from seed in a small garden.

There are people power washing the deck. When they came to out place, they moved all the planters that were against the railing into the middle of the deck. Of course, my morning glory vines were growing out of the pots and wrapped around the deck railing. The pots were in the middle of the deck, the vines were still on the railing. Scratch 5 of 6 morning glory plants from seed. I wanted to cry and apologize to Julie.

Update: Some of the morning glories are coming back. That would be nice but I realize I’m overly emotionaly invested in morning glories.

I got home one day last week and found that they had gone plant shopping for the outside. As I knew they would, they got all the standard annual crap. Plus hungarian peppers, something almost exactly anaheim peppers, and a few tomoto plants with unknown heredity; maybe they’re Big Boys, maybe they’re Sweet 100’s. One tomato plant was obviously not a Sweet 100; I’m glad they’re planting that.

My sister has left a lot of crap in the space I’m currently living. She was in the space before me, about 2 years ago. I found a big box of girlie stuff under the bathroom sink taking up a lot of space and asked her to remove it “from my bathroom.” She came back instantly and said that it wasn’t “my” bathroom. That bothered me. I didn’t bite as agressively as I might have when I responded, “Well then could you remove your things from the bathroom I am currently using?” It took 3 weeks for her to finally take the box (though it might actually still be hidden in some closet somewhere upstairs)

Oh, in other computer news: I was recovering data from the newly deceased hard drive, putting it onto a 40 gig drive I had lying around. I spent a day (yes, a full day) pulling lost clusters and crap off the 200 gig drive. I was probably pulling too much off it but I knew that I had only one shot at this; after I reformatted the hard drive, everything would be lost. So I spent a day at this and I get home after going out… the drive is making grinding noises! Short story short: the drive died. Well, I always wanted to open up a drive and see what’s really inside.

My $500 ad in that church newsletter has been in for about 3 weeks and it hasn’t generated a single phone call.

Good news: After fiddling with Ontrack Easy Recover for 1 1/2 days, I recovered -everything- from the old 200 gig drive.

I posted a personal on polymatchmaker.com. It feels weird. But I posted it.

A client of mine, A.P. told me that he wants me to sign up for eharmony.com and run it though its paces because he has a friend he thinks could use such a service. He wants me to vet the service for him. A.P. will pay for my account and everything. Actually, I think he’s just perceptive and believes I would benefit from it. A.P. has quickly become a friend. I’ll sign up soon.

So this post has a lot of grumbling minutia. Sorry but that’s how I feel right now.

[Grumble]

In other news… an old friend from Wavexpress wrote to me to sign this petition…

Here’s the petition

By forwarding this message to you sign the petition. You need to put TOM@TOMSPETITION.ORG in the cc field to be counted.

>> Subject: Six Degrees from Columbine: Save the Ban on Assault Weapons
>>
>> Dear Friend:
>> Five years ago my 15-year-old son Daniel Mauser was one of 13 people
>> killed at Columbine High School by two students. One of them used an
>> illegal assault weapon. This summer, AK-47s, UZIs, and TEC-DC9s, will
>> be legal again unless we do something about it. In this day and age,
>> nothing could be more insane.
>>
>> Using an exciting and unprecedented new Internet technology to grow
>> an online petition, join me in my effort to see how many millions of
>> names I can collect to deliver to President Bush. We will change the
>> course of this country and create a lasting legacy for my son.
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> Here is how you can help:
>>
>> Please sign this petition by forwarding this email to your family and
>> friends. Make sure to add my e-mail address TOM@TOMSPETITION.ORG to
>> your list of friends in the same forwarded e-mail (don’t use bcc).
>> This petition uses a new technology that allows you to see how many
>> supporters you can reach through the power of “six degrees of
>> separation.”
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> Sending to TOM@TOMSPETITION.ORG confirms your participation and
>> allows our petition software to map the growing support for our
>> cause. We will immediately send you a link to your personal petition
>> page, where you can see a real time map of your impact on this
>> historic cause.
>>
>> If each of us passes this message on to our friends and family this
>> will be the fastest growing petition on the Internet ever! We will
>> reach millions of people and force president Bush and Congress to
>> extend the assault weapons ban.
>>
>> For more information on how the petition technology maps your
>> support, go to: http://www.tomspetition.org/info
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Tom Mauser

And my response (modified on 6-10-04 from my original email response)

>I don’t usually go in for online petitions but I thought I would in
>this case. It was started by a friend of a friend and is legit.

I completely agree that Columbine was a terrible tragedy. But the ban wouldn’t have reduced the destruction. 3 of the 4 guns used were (and still are) legal for anyone over 18 that can make it into a Wal-Mart. The TEC DC-9 machine gun used was already illegal for the killers to own before the ban. The home-made bombs were illegal as well. The manufacturer of the TEC DC-9 changed the design slightly after the ban (to the “AB-10” model) and can be purchased new with the proper license (of which, the Columbine kids still could not obtain)

I see where you’re coming from. It’s possible that the country-wide anti-gun sentiment that a ban inspires might help shape public attitude about people using guns inappropriately against other people but an “assault weapons ban” is only a tiny step in a direction toward civility, at the great expense in national safety and personal liberty.

Such legislation does not seem beneficial to our country or the kids that live in it. Much more important than attempting to make the “dangerous” guns illegal (an oxymoron if ever I saw one) is public education and community involvement.

Thanks for sending the petition along to me,
Lee

The Sussex Air Show

I flew about 7 batteries on Saturday. The first battery is always the worst. It’s like the plane is broken or something. But then it (IE me) gets better.

I’m getting tired of the motor shaft overheating and melting the prop off. I lost 1 prop today. Maybe it was the inverted crash that loosened the prop but I think it was the heat. After flying a few batteries, the motor was “ouch, that’s pretty darn hot” hot.

Weirdly enough, I keep thinking about going brushless… overpowered brushless. It’s all those gas & glow jocks at the field. There I am just inching off the field and they’re pulling verticals right after take-off.

I’m buying a laptop for a client.

I’m shopping on the Dell website, trying to find out how much the laptop is going to cost with a particular feature-set and I can’t do it. There’s shit like:

Right now, double your memory FREE (1) when you purchase ANY Dell system or select Dell servers! OR, choose cash back instead of more memory and save up to $200 on select servers or $150 on select systems, after mail-in rebate!(2)

(1) Double memory offer can not be combined with mail-in rebate. Maximum memory is 256MB with Dimension 2400 desktops and 512MB with Dimension 4600, 4600C and 8300 desktops, all OptiPlex desktops, all Dell Precision� workstations, all Latitude notebooks and Inspiron 1150, 5150, 300M, 600M, 8600 and 9100 notebooks. Maximum memory is 1GB with Dimension XPS desktops, Inspiron XPS notebooks and all PowerEdge and PowerEdge SC servers

(2) Mail-in rebate excludes Dimension 2400 and 2400 n series desktops with an Intel Celeron processor. Offer valid on orders placed between 05/20/04 and 05/26/04. Cannot be combined with free memory offer. Rebate must be postmarked within 30 calendar days of system ship date. Rebate checks are ordinarily processed within 8-10 weeks. Go to http://www.dell.com/smallbizrebates for rebate details.

When you cut through all the shit above, it comes out to: When you buy a computer, extra memory costs extra.

Of course, it also means that when you’re trying to tally up the price, you get shit like what you see at the far right. How am I supposed to feel confident about pushing that Continue button when I can’t tell how much the (rather expensive) item costs!? All I do know from this page is that my purchase is not going to cost $1226 or $1201. I might (or not) be eligible for any one of 7 advertised specials on this one computer. The list of specials takes up the entire right column of this journal entry! And each and every special has convoluted rules (see quote above) that has to be thoroughly understood before being embarked upon. What a nightmare.

cwRsync is a yet another packaging of Rsync and Cygwin. You can use cwRsync for fast remote file backup and synchronization

boxbackup has been ported to cygwin on Windows!. It’s still in beta but this is looking like a real option. When I get a minute (yeah, right) I’ll try it out.

I stole the CSS from Boxbackup. It’s journal6.css in my random cycling. Perty, ain’t it?

I’m bidding on a $20k project as Computer Guy. That is, if I can take a minute to actually write up the bid. I’ve been running ragged with people that call me saying “Oo oo, you gotta help me right now! It’s am emergency! And I had a cleaning person over a few days ago. We worked together to clean the house before my folks got back from Florida for the summer.

Every month, Paypal’s policies become nastier and nastier. I’ve read many stories at NoPaypal and a couple other sites. Now I’m starting to believe them. Freenet just reported that Paypal cut them off because they didn’t like them.

17th May, 2004 : Paypal suspends Freenet donations account
Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than “use of an anonymous proxy”, which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent). It is fortunate that Johann Gutenberg did not rely on Paypal to fund his work on the printing press, which also allowed anonymous publication of information, since his account would probably have been frozen too.

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn’t like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

They have said that they will refund our outstanding balance ($550) by check, but all of the projects subscriptions have been canceled which is a significant setback. Other means of accepting donations, including E-Gold, are still active. Anyone wishing to make a donation by check should email me directly. Unfortunately neither of these methods are as convenient as Paypal, but we will do our best to find an alternative ASAP.

E-Gold and the somewhat related digital monies are starting to look pretty darn good. E-Gold fees are about 1% of the transaction while Paypal is about 3%…. a 66% discount.