Timmerov's Blog
desk 1 : admin 0
so now i have jaguar installed and all the updates too. i copy over all of the old preferences. boom. admin dies. so now i have jaguar installed and all the updates too. i copy just the preferences i really need. okay so far so good. i copy applications using the finder. i copy the web files using terminal. then i recopy the mac style cgi scripts. pah. okay still alive. great. now i copy the etc and var entries for apache, dns, firewall, nat, and sendmail. eventually. this requires several reboots. and when i think i'm done i disconnect the old hard drive to make sure i'm not accidentally using anything from there. only to reconnect it when i find the next thing i forgot. the machine's under my desk. it's the wee hours of the night. so this process involves whacking my head on the desk a few times. might as well do it literally. been doing it figuratively all day.
jaguar 2 : admin 0
so the new admin computer is limited to jaguar (os x 10.2 for those of us with real computers). it has three installation options. 1) upgrade the existing os. this option almost works. but not quite. 2) save the old system, install the new clean, and automatically copy your settings. this option almost works, too. but not quite. 3) erase the disk and start from scratch. i needed to downgrade from panther to jaguar. so 1) wasn't an option. it's been a long time since i installed system software. i forgot how painful 2) can be. it was so close. until it wouldn't install any system update patches. and it stopped writing to system.log. makes it pretty tough to troubleshoot the system when the troubleshooting information is missing. pah.
panther 1 : admin 0
panther (os x 10.3 for those of you without real computers) is supposed to run on a blue and white g3. it don't. well, it runs just fine. once. but if you need to restart you have to first boot up off the installation cd. dumbass thing.
blue and white 1 : beige 0
the only way to recover delta tao's web server is to reinstall the os. and if i'm going to go to that much trouble i might as well move the files to a bigger faster newer computer. i just happen to have a blue and white g3 under my desk doing absolutely nothing. the old admin was a beige g3. its 10 gig hard drive definitely was too small. to make things easier i put the beige hard drive in the blue and white as a slave. remarkably, that worked just fine. got no problems with hardware. just software. pah.
ipod update 1 : admin 0
i don't have an ipod. but every week the software update tool wants to install the ipod update for me. sometimes i just ignore it. sometimes i mark it as inactive. that technique works for all the other junk apple wants to install on my system. but not the ipod update. it comes back. every week. other people have documented this problem. it seems to happen only with jaguar and g3's. and then only sometimes. the boards usually end up in a pretty useless discussion that goes like this: mark it inactive. didn't work. yes it does. no it doesn't. yes, no, yes, no. idiot. pumpkinhead. yeah, so anyway i tried to make it go away. somehow the login window got corrupted and crashes on boot. so os x comes up and i can ssh in. it nat's and dns's and serves static web pages. but all those apps run by finder never get launched. so admin went down. boom. this just couldn't happen last week when the dns was down too. oh no. had to be serial events. pah.
free software
every consumer wants their software for free. but it takes time and effort to make good quality software. LOTS of it. developers need to be compensated. so if software is free, how do i (the dev) get paid by you (the user)? (1) i could be a consultant using my own software. also known as fee based customer support. yick. i'm motivated to produce bad code. (2) your computer resources are idle most of the time. you could let me use your hard drive to store things and your cpu to calculate stuff for me. this idea is very appealing to me. the problem is: what do i want your computers to do for me?
timmerov.com
i registered timmerov.com. i still share the web server with delta tao. so if you want to get to my pages you actually have to go
here. it should be a whole lot faster up than before. enjoy.
isp
my old isp sprint broadband was okay for a long time. then it became the suck. they'd have short outages. each outage caused the modem to boost its gain a little bit to try and compensate. the gain never got turned down. so eventually it pegged at maximum. at that setting the modem would think background noise was someone else's encrypted signal. so it would wait patiently forever before sending out any packets. then i'd have to power cycle the modem. running at max gain slowly cooked the modem so it needed to boost its gain faster. a death spiral. so now i have speakeasy dsl. great policy. and more bits up and down for the same cost. yay!
nudity
the other day garrett and i were changing the batteries in the talking wendy doll. he made the astute observation that everyone's naked under their clothes.
hockey
last week's game was at 7:15. alisa has dance class at 6:30. due to circumstances beyond my control (ie i'm a flake) i ended up running around like crazy at the last minute trying to get a babysitter. #1 wasn't available. neighbor girl had to work. uncle bob had a cold. i eventually asked the neighbors to watch the boys. cost me a couple of cupcakes. garrett told mister brad he wasn't allowed to eat it until after dinner. anywho, the other team didn't have a goalie and forfeited. pah.
death
if we accept the fact that terri died, we still have a small problem. her body can still breathe, sleep, look around, make noise, etc in some sort of tragic mimicry of life. but it can't swallow food or water. the question is: how do we ethically dispose of her body? starving it to uh "death" is repugnant. it's also extremely wasteful. she has many organs in perfectly good condition that could be donated to save some lives in reality instead of in the fantasy that some are living in.
schiavo
oh boy. here we go again. death is very difficult for some people to accept. especially when it's someone as young and wonderful as terri schiavo was. especially for relatives who love their daughter as much as the schindlers did. it's horrible what happened to terri. literally. this could easily have been the plot in a stephen king horror novel. if she was old there wouldn't be an issue. medical treatments that could prolong "life" are withheld from the elderly every day. she's dead though. let's let her go.
greenspan
alan greenspan for president! too bad he's like 80+.
the notebook
good
girl movie. he's got a bad ticker. she's demented. it cannot end well. he's a little crazy. she really is spectacular. even if we don't get to see her boobies.
another mondegreen
i just found out i've misheard the lyrics from don henley's dirty laundry all my life. we got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five. ... ... the boys in the newsroom got a running bet. get down with her (!) on the set. we need dirty laundry.
hockey
victory! score! it was a fiesty game. i got two penalties. and a goal. with a new stick. the old one shattered last game last season. good way to start a new season.
holly tree
yay! the new neighbors are removing the holly tree that's been dropping prickly leaf bombs on our roses for 11 years and more. i should send them a thank you note.
vitamins
it used to be that the only way to get your vitamins and minerals was to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. if you didn't eat them you got sick and died. now all kinds of junk food is fortified with the stuff. the obesity rate really isn't all that surprising, now is it?
isp
i was thinking about getting sbc dsl. but then i found out they block smtp. so i won't be able to run my quaint little aliasing service for clan lord. pah. sprint broadband has this quaint feature of dropping out a few times a day. this causes the modem to raise its voltage levels in an attempt to compensate. eventually, they peg. and the modem can no longer connect at all. then i need to power cycle. wee.
spring
springtime seems to have suddenly showed up here. like someone threw a switch. yesterday it was cold, icky, and rainy. today it's like the memory of clouds is a bedtime story told to frighten small children into going to bed and eating their vegetables.
diet
184. 8 weeks. 13 down. 9 to go. mmm... bleachers. at least the weather's turning nice.
sprint broadband
my isp sucks. i'll be replacing it soon. i can't use my ip phone because it resets 10 times a day. and clicks twice when it does. real annoying all night long.
taxes
wee! it's tax time again. alisa didn't work a single hour of a single day last year. i worked a full year at the best paying job i've ever had. my entire salary still won't pay her taxes. but at least it's close this year.
lion king
bennett's first grade will perform the lion king this spring. he's been practicing all the songs. sometimes the lyics get a bit scrambled. i just can't wait to be king. king don't need no advice from no hornbills full of snot.
saurabh
saurabh is a friend of ours from india. one year he decided to learn to ski and ended up being one of the faster skiers on the corporate ski team. we taught him to play softball. saurabh, knock the ball out of the park. then run around the bases. so he did. we gave him a glove and sent him to the outfield. catch all fly balls before they hit the ground. he'd get under them real nice. then just before the ball got to him he'd throw his glove on the ground and catch it barehanded. cricket players.
work
no blogs cause work is crazy. more on that later.
