There’s all this chatter on the Noisebridge list. Someone working on an important new Calendar and Room Reservation System asked for brainstorming on what the system needed. I gave some feedback. 50 chatty/bitchy posts on the subject later I wrote some more feedback. I notice that the wiki Todo list was updated with my comments both times and precious few other times.
I felt tempted to dive in to the chat/bitch fest but I held my tongue/fingers because it didn’t seem like any benefit could come of it. After my second email I even got an email asking me to stop submitting feedback because, well the author didn’t say it in as many words and didn’t mean it in a mean way but, because my email wasn’t part of the bitching.
A. Artist has created a work of art titled “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009)” (“the Artwork”) which consists of a black box that places itself for sale on the auction website “eBay” (the “Auction Venue”) every seven (7) days. The Artwork consists of the combination of the black box or cube, the electronics contained therein, and the concept that such a physical object “sells itself” every week.
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I have trouble giving myself a day off because I’ve got a million things on my todo list. But today, I was off.
Went to the shooting range with Schuyler and his friend Mitch. While I was officially Schuyler’s Parent or Guardian because of his tender young age (!), I spent the most time with Mitch, giving him a shooting lesson. It was fun and sometimes funny watching him load the magazine backwards, try desperately to operate the slide, and hold the gun in a position where he’d surely bonk himself in the head if he were to fire the gun for real. All that said, he did great on the range! I was thinking it would just be good if he got out there but in his last round, he took 7 shots, all on the paper, most inside a small circle. And darn we had fun!
(and click on that image to the left. I wasn’t trying to but I caught the slide and kick of the gun perfectly!)
After, Schuyler and I came back home, we chatted and cleaned the gun and then off to Papalote, where I got 2 more stamps on my Burrito Card. My next burrito will be free! I liked the sound of that I asked the cashier to repeat the words, “Your next burrito will be free.” Wee!
I got a call from my dad and emails from my aunts Dorothy and Ernestine telling me how cool it was that I’m speaking at Techkriti and the company I’ll be keeping there.
Laurie came over and we all chatted about all manner of things… from niobium to the magic of twist ties to baking bread. We baked. I figured it would be good practice for my upcoming bread teaching class and, well, there was no bread in the house! Schuyler ended up staying so long that he got to have some and take some home. We opened up the last of my lonza and talked about making some of our own! It might be possible to sweat the meat in a refrigerator inside a plastic container and a drainage rack!
I’m already forgetting many of the nonstop jokes we chatted up. It was a really good day!
My car has been running a little rough at idle when cold. It would sometimes cut out for a moment and almost stall. The “Check Engine” light came on. It was due for a Test-Only smog check so I took it in for a smog test. The smog guy said the car passed except for the Check Engine light. He handed me a paper describing a $500 repair credit for smog-related repairs from the State.
I took my car to the mechanic at 400 Guerrero. He said, “I looked for a few hours. Maybe it’s the throttle sensor, maybe the computer. I don’t have the equipment to check the computer. Take it somewhere else. I won’t charge you.”
I took my car to a dealer in Walnut Creek, Michael Stead (because all the local Chrysler dealers are closed because of effing General Motors going into the shitter). They replaced the throttle sensor for $500. Before I got home, the problem manifested itself again.
I took the car to the dealer again and now they say it’s an intermittent open connection in the electrical system. They want to charge me $1,800 to replace the entire wiring harness. Is this reasonable?
The dealer will reimburse me the $500 for the mistaken throttle sensor problem. And I should get $500 free money from the state.
If I get a second opinion, might a mechanic be able to find and replace the one bad wire in the electrical system for less than $1,800? Do I dare try cutting and soldering wires myself? I mean, if it’s broken copper in a wire, it’s $1 of wire that’s gone bad.
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The service rep asks, “The mechanic opened the hood and… has there ever been a fire in your car?”
“Hmm? mmm. Ha! No, but it’s been to Burning Man! All that dust under the hood! And you can never get it out. The mechanic has never seen a car that’s been to Burning Man, has he?”
This morning Sparkfun had a “Free Day” giving away $100,000 in $100 increments to shoppers. Obviously, their servers came crashing down.
Eric asked on the SWARM list
Eric: anyone get anything?
Lee: I clicked Refresh until my fingers were bloody stumps. But nothing. I’m writing to you now with voice recognition soft wear because I have no fingers.
Mark A: lolz… “soft wear”
I was lying in bed this morning (after being up a while) and the bed started rocking. An earthquake! Wee!! It was really tiny, like 5 seconds total. It felt like someone was at the foot of the bed wiggling the frame a little.
Just now I just tried to wiggle the bed like the earthquake but the frame is too stiff. It was the building doing that wiggling! The motion was entirely horizontal, head-foot / east-west.
The US Geological Survey says this about the earthquake:
