qpmarl blog

Arizona Again

2007-08-22T01:26:00.001-05:00

http://tinyurl.com/ys8zm9
takes you to a google maps page.

that's where my car's parked right now.

Arizona sucks, but I have a nice room. We're putting in a slide at a
small resort down here. I don't know what the big draw is supposed to
be, but it's not their water park. They have (rather, they will have
once we've built it) a single, small slide dumping into a unremarkable
pool. They're building some kind of big thing next to it. I have no
idea what it is. maybe an indoor pool, but no indoor slides that I'm
aware of.

The new slide is straight north, and a little east of my parking spot,
the lodge buildings, and the small pool. On google's satellite view,
you'll only see some dirt that looks like a lot of people have been
driving through.

This is probably the fanciest room I've had while building water
slides - Oh, I've stayed in rooms in Wisconsin Dells that normally go
for $350/night. I have no idea what this room costs, but it has a full
size fridge, stove, dish washer, and a full compliment of dishes in
the kitchen area, which is also the living/dining room (couch, table,
chairs). It has a nice bedroom and a bathroom that would pass as a
modest master bath in a full size house. There was another door in the
bathroom that I wasn't sure about, so I opened it. It held a washer
and dryer - the space saver type stacked on atop the other. Now I'm
stoked. I don't have to haul my laundry down any halls or find a
laundromat (because some hotels don't have one), or wash my clothes in
the bath tub.

This room is sweet. But It's very temporary. A week from now, I'll be
sleeping in my car like I've done for the last 3 nights.

You Broke My Nose!

2007-04-02T18:44:00.000-05:00

No Wait, I broke my nose. Uh, not quite.

I was tightening a nut on a 1/2" bolt with a long 7/8" wrench. The bracket I was working on was on a fiberglass seam about 2 1/2' off the ground. The only position I had to work from was nearly directly underneath the piece. I was pulling the wrench toward my face and it slipped off the nut. The end hit me square on the bridge of my nose. I had been pulling pretty hard.

I made no sound, but buried my face in my shirt sleeve. I thought that I'd heard a slight cracking sound, but my nose did not seem to be broken. But blood was rushing, not out of my nostrils, but out of a gash on the bridge of my nose. I dabbed at the blood for a bit and took a minute to regain my senses, then went back to work.

Now it's a bit swollen and the gash is a bit larger than I'd thought at first. I'll flickr some pics when I get a chance.

Cameras

2007-02-08T00:14:00.000-06:00

I just got a new camera. There's a story behind my reason for getting it.

My dad had a Canon system¹ a number of years ago, but the camera was damaged in a car crash. My mom had a Pentax Spotmatic which she said she'd give to me, but she couldn't find it. I'd been bugging her about it for a while. When she finally found it I was like a kid on Christmas morning. In the camera bag with the Pentax and the one rather long lens she had for it was another lens from my dad's Canon. The lens was a 75-300mm auto-focus zoom. A decent lens though also rather long even at its widest. But it will not fit on the Pentax. I kinda tried selling the lens, but later decided that I'd like to use it. I found a used Canon Elan II for $54. In comparison, the lens would be around $200 brand new. The camera body itself is easily one of the cheapest parts of a good SLR system - in film that is.

The Elan is pretty nice. It's my first modern SLR. The Pentax is nice, but all mechanical with manual film advance and manual focus only - and the meter is broken. The Elan has a servo drive, evaluative metering, auto focus, and a lot of other features I am eager to try out. Though it is only a mid-level SLR. The auto focus is not all that fast and the subject tracking doesn't work very well. Also the servo drive is only capable of 3 fps - I bet I could thumb the manual lever on the Pentax that fast - though I doubt I could maintain scene composure while doing so.

I shot an entire roll of film today - just trying it out. Then I went to Kits Camera, dropped off the film and picked up a strap and some filters.

If Kits Camera is an accurate example of what camera stores have become, we are living in sad times. The have a poor selection of lenses in stock - they could order them of course. When I asked for a price list of lenses, they told me I had to look it up on the web site. They have to send out for black and white processing as well as E-6 (color slide) processing. They do still repair lenses and cameras, but the prices are quite ridiculous - almost as much as buying the same lens brand new. I intend to learn to repair my own gear. I'll probably need a number of special tools to do so.

I have also bid on a bunch of cameras on ebay - I don't trust ebay stuff to be in good working order - not being able to try it out before buying it, but like I said, I plan to learn to repair stuff. And if I get any of the stuff from ebay, it'll be at pretty good prices.

Jobs

2006-12-20T19:53:00.000-06:00

I got a temp job for a communications company - pulling data cables and stuff. It's not bad, but I'm only working a few days/week.

I applied for a Datacenter Technician job last week. I got a call back from them, but didn't have my phone on me, so it just went to voice mail. I called back and got a machine. Left a message and got a call back again when I didn't have my phone. Every time I try to call, I get a machine. It would suck if I didn't get the job just because I didn't answer my phone.

I also got a call from my water slide boss. It sounds like they want me to come back. I would do it in a heartbeat if it didn't mean living on the road all the time. That was probably the best job I've ever had - but hopefully not the best I ever will have.

Digital Photo Editing

2006-11-22T00:42:00.000-06:00

When it comes to digital photo editing, there's really only one player - you know who it is - starts with Photo ends with Shop. Sure there are others, but when people talk about digital image work, they talk about Photoshop.

But that's not what this post is about. In fact, I haven't ever really used photoshop - I've played with it a bit on various computers - I may have even had some ancient version installed on my own computer long, long ago. But I grew up with Corel Photo Paint. Then I advanced to The Gimp. The Gimp is basically open source Photoshop - it doesn't have all the fancy features of Photoshop, but it has all the necessary elements of a powerful photo editor.

But that's not what this post is about. In fact, my very best photos - and I've read the same from one or more professional photographers on the net - my very best photos have not been digitally touched at all (excluding simple chores such as cropping which don't alter the remaining content). I have taken a few photos and touched them up so they look pretty good, but I have not been able to replicate the quality of a picture that's just awesome straight out of the camera.

Car Seat Chair Update

2006-11-04T22:22:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I wanted a mousing surface and drink holder. And so I added them.

Here are the pictures.

While I was at it, I fixed the crappy chair mounting with some 1/2" bolts.

Features:

Really ugly
Very comfortable
Quite sturdy

Still lacking:

Footrest
Monitor/Laptop stand
Integrated sound system

The footrest is essential, but I haven't got to it yet. For now I'm using the edge of a bed (in my room, but not my bed), but the bed is a bit high which causes a bit of discomfort after a while.

The Monitor/Laptop stand is not essential - I just set the laptop on my lap. My desktop monitor is on a dresser (again - in my room, but not mine).

The integrated sound is something I've been thinking of since I first built it. It'll probably just be a frame to attach some cheap computer speakers behind the seat. I was thinking of mounting this directly to the steel frame of the backrest. I tore a hole in the back to get a look at this frame - shouldn't be too hard to attach something there. Afterwards, I'll close the hole all up with some nice, ugly gray duct tape.

The design of the armrest/mousing surface/drink holder follows the original design philosophy of using scrap materials. I did go out and buy the 1/2 inch bolts though - since we didn't have anything that big in the garage. I paid no attention what so ever to aesthetics. And I used only the scraps of the scraps that I used the first time.

Sorry about the messed up colors in those pictures. My camera's auto white balance is messed up or something. I could change it and reshoot them, but I'm too lazy.

Car Seat Chair

2006-10-29T00:03:00.001-05:00

Car Seat Chair, originally uploaded by qpmarl42.

Here's a picture of the chair on the base I made for it. It's the best chair ever.

Stupid window shadows.

2006-10-25T18:45:00.000-05:00

Xfce is a lot like other desktop managers - if you're a Windows only user, then the only desktop manager that you are likely familiar with (and probably don't spend much time thinking about) is "the Windows Desktop¹".

And like other desktop managers, Xfce serves up eye candy like it's Halloween 365 days/year.

One of the fancy effects is window shadows². The 3D look and feel seems to be regarded as a necessity by GUI designers these days. The shadows are enabled by default and didn't bother me at all - until I switched the window manager's behavior to "focus follows mouse" and "do not raise on in-window click or focus". I like this behavior because I can be scrolling through a webpage or writing some email, but have another window open above the browser so that I can keep an eye it. If I decide that I do want the browser on top, it's a simple matter to click the title bar to bring it to the top.

Now the window shadows have become a problem - simply because the window manager does not clear them properly when bringing an already focused window to the top. Any overlapping windows are cleared, but their shadows remain visible on the now topmost window - until the entire window is redrawn³.

This obviously became a pain in the neck rather quickly, so I had to disable them - only to find out that they are not only on by default, but that there is no option in Xfce's window manager properties (or any other Xfce settings dialog that I could find) to disable them.

There's probably an Xfce config file somewhere to disable it, but hunting that down could take a while. But I know what to do. I know that the shadows depend on the X server's "composite" extension.

So I just edited xorg.conf and disabled the composite extension.

Problem solved.

^{1. In fact, most desktop managers perform the role of, in MS Windows terms, The Desktop (Icons and Wallpaper), The "Start" menu (usually called the application launcher in other managers), the task bar, the System tray, and maybe some other things.

2. Window Shadows are actually a "feature" of the window manager, but as this is almost always closely tied to the desktop manager - and usually controlled through the desktop manager, it can be thought of as in the domain of the desktop manager.

3. The windows are redrawn when moved, resized, and for any number of other reasons.}

Pictures of Gus with Grapes

2006-10-07T11:58:00.000-05:00

Gus really likes grapes

2006-10-06T20:57:00.000-05:00

Neither dog eats lettuce (Gus will if you throw it for him and he swallows it without tasting it). Kia doesn't eat tomato, but Gus does.

They both eat grapes (I was a bit surprised by this). Gus seems to really like them as he's standing beside me, slobbering on my arm as I'm eating a bowl of grapes. If I throw one for him, he goes nuts. Kia doesn't seem to like them quite as much.

Pennies don't go in the garbage disposal

2006-10-05T20:18:00.000-05:00

I started to suspect there was a penny in the garbage disposal the first time I turned it on after arriving here in September. Suspicions were confirmed when I took a look in there while it was running - I could see the penny bouncing around every once in a while.

I don't use the thing very often and I didn't feel like sticking my hand in there - so I left it.

But today I figured it would probably be better to not have a penny in the garbage disposal, so I retrieved it. It actually wasn't very easy to find - my hand barely fits in there and I couldn't feel it the first time - so I tried to look in there and find it, but couldn't see it - so I ran it a bit and looked again. Finally it was in plain sight, so I reached in and got it. It's barely identifiable as a penny anymore - It looks more like some unearthed ancient Roman coin or something.

Anyhow the disposal is not so annoying to use now - it was pretty loud.

Dogs are funny

2006-10-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

I'm taking care of the dogs while my parents are away. These dogs are worse than kids - they require constant attention and are in my face whenever I'm cooking or eating or trying to sleep. And every 10 minutes they want to either go out or come back in.

Today I had two pans on the stove - one with rice and one with burger. I went to the rice, picked up the pan and the dogs got excited (they always expect the cook, usually my dad, to give them a taste). So I said, "You think you like rice, huh?" and gave them each a bit. It was just plain white rice, but they went for it like it was filet mignon.

Later I was writing some email or something on the computer in my bedroom and they got to wrestling in there - they have to be wherever I am. The wrestling got pretty rough and they were on my bed. One of them fell behind the bed and pushed it away from the wall - it's on rollers because my mom's crazy. So I scolded them and chased them out of the room. I straightened up the bed and got back to work on the computer. Then, as I was finishing up, they were meandering back into my room. It didn't bother me, but I was getting up as they were coming in. They must have thought that I was getting up to kick them out 'cause they turned tail and were falling over each other in order to get out. It was a pretty funny sight.

Gus is the gray one and Kia is the light brown one with her head out of frame. The black one isn't ours and isn't here - this picture was taken on a pack trip and my dad's friend brought his dogs too - the black on is his.

Windows is freakin useless

2006-09-13T20:12:00.000-05:00

the link is to a thread that I started on the gentoo forum - you don't have to know what gentoo is to appreciate it.

Craigslist prank

2006-09-11T18:25:00.000-05:00

This guy's just having some fun. Some nerds in Highschool (I won't use their names) used to do something similar on ICQ (yeah, it was a long time ago) - how many perverts could they bait while posing as teenage girls - they called it "pervert baiting" and they could bait a lot of them.

Flickr

2006-09-10T23:44:00.000-05:00

I created a Flickr account - you can find some of my photos there.

Super Mouse

2006-09-09T23:35:00.000-05:00

Ever try to close the door or manupulate some other physical object with the mouse cursor? I almost tried it - barely caught myself before I actually tried it.

No, I never did go to Jamaica

2006-07-20T13:55:00.000-05:00

This is kind of old news for me, but I'm posting this because people are still asking me about it once in a while.

Yes, I thought that I was going to have to go to Jamaica - I did not want to and told my boss so. It would have been nice to make a little extra money, but I'd rather be done with waterslide building. I liked the work and the travel, but I didn't like the requirement that it take up nearly 100% of my life, never seeing family, never being able to make any lasting relationships with new people, etc. I could see that I was starting to go nuts.

Anyhow, my boss called me and said that they were having some problems getting the hardware down there so the job would be delayed some more (it had already been delayed twice). He was going to take a few people down to do whatever they could without the missing hardware. And he said that there was little point waiting around if I wanted to get on with my summer plans. So I was pretty excited and took off for Wyoming then Seattle, thus beginning my summer travels.

I spent some time with my sister and parents in Wyoming - went hiking and took a lot of pictures. My parents went out to Seattle with me, we went whitewater rafting on the Wenatchee with my brother who is a guide. My parents left - I stayed and hung out with my brother and took a lot more pictures.

I flew back to MSP (I just like to use the airport code), drove to Duluth, hung out with Becky, Sarah, and my other cousins up there. I left Duluth with Becky and Sarah, stopped in Burnsville to pick up Faith, and headed out to Charity's wedding in Idaho. We stayed in Spokane with the Burke's. We stopped at my parent's place in Wyoming on the way out and on the way back. I was hoping to pick up my dog on the way back, but My dad had taken him on a trip to the Gros Ventre (pronounced grow vont) and I couldn't wait for them to get back. I spent the 4th in Duluth, then headed down to Afton to house/horse/dog sit for the Arcos. Then I left for Cleveland, tried to go to Cedar Point, but it rained, went to Geauga Lake, picked up some people I found on craigslist's rideshare, dropped them off in Philadelphia, and went up to visit my cousin Dan in Scranton - which is where I am now.

Next I'm heading back to Cleveland to try Cedar Point again - I want to go several times because I effectively(not technically) have a season pass (No it doesn't have anything to do with my former waterslide job).

thinking putty

2006-07-09T15:09:00.000-05:00

Thinking putty looks pretty cool. I haven't got my hands on any yet, but I gave some to my brother for Christmas a few years ago - I don't think that I gave him the hypercolor stuff, but it's pretty cool anyhow.

The link is to the paint with hot/cold section of the site. There is lots of other stuff to do with it so explore the website

Stallman on DRM

2006-06-26T15:05:00.000-05:00

The following is a excerpt from an interview with Richard Stallman (RMS) follow the title link for the full interview.

Q: OK. Now, when we talk about Digital Restrictions Management, what kind of role do you see it playing in Free Software? In other words --

04:26

rms: Well, it can't play any.

04:27

Q: It can't play any.

04:28

rms: No. You see, when somebody's goal is to restrict the public, the first thing he does is, he writes software whose code restricts the public, refuses to function as the public would wish. The next thing he wants to do is make sure that the public can't remove that restriction. So, of course he's not going to want it to really be Free Software. His goal is that the public should not have Freedom Number 1 the freedom to change the program and make it do what you want. So they try various things to stop this, they -- well, the first step is, if they can, they just don't release the source code. But the next step is -- which they could try either way -- is Tivoization, that is designing a machine so that it won't run a modified version. Now, this is a way of turning Freedom Number 1 into a sham. And we've decided that we are going to defend Freedom 1 as a reality, not just as a theoretical construct. So there is no room for DRM in Free Software. You could write a Free program which refuses to do something, I think there are a few, but the point is, since users can change it, it won't really satisfy anyone who wishes to impose DRM on others.

Now, this is an interesting example of the difference between Free Software and Open Source. Some people promote what they call "Open Source DRM". Now, recall the difference in fundamental values between Free Software and Open Source. In Free Software, our values are freedom and community. We want to be part of a community of free people. Whereas, in Open Source, they talk about making powerful, reliable software and they promote a development model. Now, for us, the question of how a program is developed is a secondary issue. I mean, if some models work better than others, fine -- use them. But that's not what's really important to Free Software, to people who value -- who support the Free Software movement and value freedom.

So, there are people who say that they could apply that development model to developing software designed to restrict us. And maybe it's true; maybe if people study and share and collaborate in developing software designed to take away our freedom, it might become more powerful and reliable in taking away our freedom. But that's a bad thing. That's evil. It's -- in spirit, it's similar to collaborative development of a virus. If something is evil, we don't want it to be done well. We want it to be done as badly as possible.

Maya Angelou

2006-06-19T15:54:00.000-05:00

Maya Angelou was a wise woman - some of these quotes are pretty deep.

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
Maya Angelou

Help protect your digital media rights

2006-06-18T12:29:00.000-05:00

Follow the link to a short video about the attacks against your digital media rights.

The MPAA and RIAA are paranoid that digital media piracy is costing them billions of dollars per year. They are taking extreme measures to prevent such piracy - measures which also prevent legal use of the media by law abiding citizens like you and me. Sony BMG has recently employed a DRM (Digital Rights Management) method which inadvertently opens your computer to hackers and itself violates copyright law.

These organizations are working to make it even harder for everyone to legally access digital media.

Gus

2006-06-17T00:21:00.000-05:00

I got a dog. His name is Gus. He's a cool dog. He doesn't like to be away from me and he likes McDonald's Cheeseburgers.

check it out

2006-06-05T17:04:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the mentos in the soda trick? This is a very elaborate display of such. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you should definitely check it out.

Car update.

2006-06-01T19:52:00.000-05:00

I didn't pay too much after all. I ended up getting it for $2k less than the sticker price - it's a complicated story - I won't bother you with it.

Car

2006-05-24T12:13:00.000-05:00

I bought a car. I paid too much, but I don't care. I wanted a car quick and I got one. It's a '94 Toyota Corolla. It's a nice car.

Cliff Jumpin (Metaphoric)

2006-05-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

Cliff Jumping is Awesome. It's exhilarating. It's scary as hell.

This isn't about Cliff Jumping per se. I've been applying the fear and the rush of cliff jumping to other challenges in life - especially to the fear of certain social situations.

It took me a year to build up the courage to jump my first 45' cliff. The physical part of it is easy. The challenge is overcoming the fear. It's all mental. The critical moment is not the moment of departure from the edge. It's a moment before when the mind commits to the jump - "I am going to do this". Then "I may not survive this. I am prepared to die. I am going to die". Then the feet leave the safety of the rock. There's a few seconds of free-fall then a stinging plunge as the body hits the surface of the water. Then comes the panic to reach the surface for a breath of precious air. A scream escapes as the head emerges from the water. "I'm alive. I survived this time". It's the most thrilling feeling in the world. It was all worth it.

The moment of commitment is exactly the same in situations of social fear.

National Archives on Google video

2006-03-29T20:18:00.000-06:00

Here you will find videos from the National Archives vault - including the Apollo 11 moon landing, a bunch of WWII videos and a lot of other stuff from the 30's, etc.

The World Wild Web

2006-03-19T22:43:00.000-06:00

Or is it Weird Wild Web

Anyways, I'm going to just start calling it "The Wild". I've been trying to think of a better name for a while because I hate "Internet" - it has too many syllables - doesn't flow off the tongue. "net" is not specific enough - it can mean any type of network.

"Wild", I believe, more accurately captures the essence of the internet - the network itself, the people on it, and the data available. It is uncontrollable. It is wild.

Google Video

2006-03-17T22:02:00.000-06:00

This is pretty cool. It's google hosted videos. The have everything from free home-made videos (some funny, some not) to commercial shows/movies that you can buy or rent for a day(all online of course).

I bought a couple of Twilight Zone episodes.

You have to be online to watch the stuff you buy though, so that's kinda lame.

Hey Spammers

2006-03-16T20:30:00.000-06:00

I don't read your junk, you can stop sending it to me. I don't even read the sender or subject fields anymore, I just go into my spam folder (with about 107 new spams), select all and delete. I trust my spam filter. It does a pretty good job, so you can stop wasting your time and internet bandwidth sending that junk.

Jamaica

2006-03-16T19:48:00.000-06:00

It's fairly certain that I'm going to Jamaica for a time. I can't say any more than that.

2006-03-16T10:41:00.000-06:00

from Tom:

Of course the geodesic dome isn't used much for housing. What do you do with those corners at the bottom and that small space at the top?

Yeah. They had some strange floor plans and stuff. In one design, the floor of the dome itself is just dirt - perhaps with plants and stuff growing in it - it could be landscaped or whatever. Then for the living area, you got these modular, triangular floor panels that can be connected together in just about any shape you want - they are pre-formed fiberglass/styrofoam or some junk and they have electrical connections built in so that when you connect them, they form a continuous electrical circuit with outlets built in to each. You'd have a lot of basically unused space around the circumference of the dome and the top of the dome.

A Short Hiatus

2006-03-14T19:45:00.000-06:00

It's been at least two days since I've pulled my laptop out of its bag and for about a week before that, just a few times to watch a movie.

I just finished reading Buckminster Fuller: Designing for Mobility by Michael John Gorman. It's sort of a Biography, but not about him so much as about his designs (most notably the geodesic dome). The guy had some pretty crazy ideas, most of them too radical or impractical to become reality (like sky cities floating in the air inside giant geodesic domes). His Dymaxion transport - intended to be a car/plane with inflatable wings that would be deflated and stored for "extended taxiing mode" - was sort of constructed. Three Dymaxion Cars (they had no wings) were built. They had two big wheels in front and a single small wheel in the back which was used for steering - the idea was that planes and ships are steered from the rear and automobiles should be as well. In practice it wasn't much good.

One design that has persisted is the geodesic dome, which never reached Fuller's expectations. His idea was that it would allow cheap, easily erected, mass produced housing. It has proven rather problematic as a dwelling structure.

Acetone

2006-02-22T22:19:00.000-06:00

It's what's in nail polish remover. We use it when caulking waterslides (you gotta do that so they don't leak and stuff). We practically swim in the stuff.

Read the MSDS and notice the part about intoxication. Yeah - that part's true. It's not as much fun as it sounds.

My last trail job

2006-02-22T22:00:00.000-06:00

It's been quite a while since I worked for the forest service, but something got me thinking of it and I've been looking at maps (online of course) of the places I've been in Alaska.

Follow the link to see one of the cabins that I stayed in while I was working for the Forest Service - yes, I stayed in this very cabin for 8 days while I worked on a bridge on a nearby trail. You can go there and stay for $35 or $25 /night depending on the time of year. Of course getting there will cost quite a bit more because it's smack dab in the middle of Tongass National Forest with no road access. You gotta go by float plane or boat (probably from Petersburg).

I don't know if the bridge I built is still there. It was a simple log bridge and I don't know what the life expectancy is on those.

PS - if you do go to Petersburg, let me know because I have some family there and you should meet them. It's worth the trip just to visit Petersburg. It would be awesome to live there. Perhaps I will live somewhere like that someday.

Another PS - dab is a funny word. It looks funny. it's almost qap (pronounced cap - I just made it up) upside down - if only there was an upside down compliment to 'a'.

On the Impossibility of Time Travel

2006-02-11T21:51:00.000-06:00

Tom noticed this article on slashdot and pointed it out to me.

The idea is that time travel is logically impossible despite what the spacetime physicists say.

Sorry Paul

2006-01-30T21:21:00.000-06:00

Paul didn't go to see Tristan and Isolde. It was just me, Tim, Jamie, and Caleb. Paul was at a different place.

Job Hazards

2006-01-30T20:47:00.000-06:00

I should make another spin-off blog for work related injuries and incidents. Yesterday I was cleaning, caulking, and painting inside a bowl slide.

The bowl is like 10 ft. tall and 20 ft. across with a 6 ft. hole in the middle where you drop out into the pool (these measurements are just guesses, I don't really know exactly the height/width) . The pool was covered with planks and pallets so that we could walk around inside the bowl and walk up the sides and stuff. The sides aren't that steep - maybe like an 8/12 pitch or something until you hit the edge where it curves up into the wall of the bowl (It's really more like a shallow funnel shape).

We have a pair of suction cups that are designed for carrying large panes of glass. We use them for carrying fiberglass and for climbing around on fiberglass (like inside the bowl). They're really pretty cool. They have a thumb pump on the handle that creates a vacuum between the cup and the fiberglass and a button to release the suction when you're ready to take it off. You can get quite a bit of suction out of them so that they work very well for foot and hand holds on the fiberglass - as long as the seal doesn't leak, they could easily hold several hundred pounds. The only problem with them is that they don't work if the fiberglass is curved very much. They can handle a little curvature like on the base of the bowl (funnel shaped part).

So I had been using these suction cups to keep myself from sliding and falling down the bowl - the fiberglass was a little wet from some rain the day before, so it was slick. But then the sun came out and dried the glass off pretty well. Also, the reflection of the sun off the shiny fiberglass raised the temperature quite a bit. It was probably 60 deg. outside, but inside the bowl, in the sunny area, it was probably closer to 75 or 80 deg. So I was working in there barefoot (gives the best traction on dry fiberglass), and in a t-shirt.

As the fiberglass started to dry, I abandoned the suction cups because I could move around pretty good barefoot.

Then Pat, the other guy who was working there at the time (there was just the two of us) came in and he was cleaning off the lower section of the bowl that you can reach while standing on the pallets.

I was talking to him, working, and walking around the bowl. Then I walked onto the shaded side, which happens to be the side I started on before the sun came out to dry the glass. And because it was on the shaded side, it wasn't completely dry. I took a step and lost my footing - imagine trying to stand on an ice skating rink that's tilted to 30 deg. The whole panel was wet, so there is no way that I could stop myself. As soon as I lost my footing I yelled "I'm coming down!" Pat happened to be standing right at the bottom of the panel that I was surfing.

He didn't get out of the way. Just behind Pat was an Aluminum ladder. I think that he tried to catch me or something. So I tackled him into the ladder. My leg broke the slats on the pallet where it hit (they're some cheap junk that may break when you step on them). My face hit Pat's head. He twisted his thumb. I nearly split my lip (it's not as bad as I first thought that it would be).

Neither of us were hurt too much. I got back up there and my legs were a bit wobbly for a few minutes. I used the suction cups on the wet side after that.

Another silly survey

2006-01-28T21:23:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the 2006 edition of getting to know your friends or family. What you are supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire e-mail and paste it onto a new-mail that you'll send. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send this to a whole bunch of people including the person who sent it to you. Put your name in the subject line. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

What time did you get up this morning? 7 am for work. Actually specifying a time that I get up is difficult - do you mean the time that I first wake up and start paying attention to the time, the time that I actually get out of bed, or the time that I am fully awake and functional?

What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Tristan and Isolde - I went with Tim, Jamie, Paul, and Caleb. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be except for the historical and literary inaccuracy.

What is your favorite TV show? I honestly don't watch any shows regularly.

What did you have for breakfast? A few swigs of stale, flat Pepsi

What is your middle name? Andrew

What is your favorite cuisine? It's hard for me to pick favorites. I like Chinese egg rolls.

What is your favorite Potato chip? I like Ketchup. A lot of people dislike Ketchup flavored potato chips, but I like them a lot. Of course, I only eat them a few times a year because they aren't widely available in the US.

What is your favorite CD? I like Bach. I have a few Bach CD's - one that's played on period instruments and it's really good. I just bought some Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole cd's - he's a Hawaiian musician - kind of like the Hawaiian Elvis or something.

What kind of car do you drive? White 2005 Ford Cargo (Work) Van. This new work van is nice because we can open the back doors from inside - in the old one, the guys in the back would have to be let out.

What is your favorite sandwich? A really nice steak done medium-rare on two buttered slices of potato bread or some other suitable bread. When the steak juices completely saturate the bread there is nothing better.

Favorite item of clothing? I don't wear nice clothes very much. Mostly my clothes are work clothes. I have some Carhart jeans that I really like.

If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Tahiti. If I ever go there, I might just stay there forever.

What color is your bathroom? I mostly live in hotels. Hotel bathrooms are white

Favorite brand of clothing? Carhart - they're a bit expensive for work clothes, but they last a lot longer than cheaper stuff. I'll have holes in a pair of Wal-Mart jeans in under a week.

Where would you want to retire to? I don't know a specific location, but if it's not Tahiti, then it'll be some rural area near lots of woods, maybe some mountains, plenty of fresh air and hours from any major cities.

Favorite time of day? It depends what I'm doing. On vacation, it would be after dark. I like to see the stars - and if it's cloudy and misty, that's nice too because I like the smell of rain and mist especially at night. On a work day it's probably the first few minutes of lunch break (when you can put your tools down and relax a little).
Where were you born? Meadville, PA. My family has a long history in that town.

Favorite sport to watch? I don't really watch sports, but Hockey is entertaining

Coke or Pepsi? Cherry Coke

Are you a morning person or night owl? I am a severe night owl.

What size shoe do you wear? 11, but I can fit into a 10 1/2 wide (wide is not so common so I just get 11).
Do you have pets? Well, there's this huge spider living in my shower, but I only see him when I'm home every few weeks.

Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone? I got a raise. I might go to Jamaica in February/March

Favorite Candy Bar? Baby Ruth

What is your best childhood memory? Summers at Desert Lake. It's an awesome place.

Different jobs you have had in your life? Carpenter, Machine operator, Powerplant Mechanic's Assistant, Christmas Tree harvester, Seedling picker (Tree jerker), Fish gutter, Forest Service Trail and Bridge Builder, Waterslide Builder (my most successful yet).

Nicknames? Flip

Piercing? None now, nor ever.

Ever been to Africa? Nope

Ever been toilet papered? Nope

Love someone so much it made you cry? Not yet

Been in a car accident? Minor ones

Croutons or bacon bits? Bacon bits? Bleh! I like croutons. Bacon bits are just about the only thing that I always avoid at the salad bar.

Favorite day of the week? Sunday - it's usually a relaxing day, unless you work 7 days/week as I usually do.

Favorite restaurant? Any Non-chain family restaurant with good food/service.

Favorite flower? I honestly have never chosen one.

Favorite ice cream? Vanilla

Disney or Warner Brothers? Hmm, I have some fond memories of Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn - then again, Chip and Dale were pretty good too.

Favorite fast food restaurant? Subway

What color is your bedroom carpet? Hotel carpet is usually multicolored, the room I'm in now has a greenish carpet.

How many times did you fail your driver's test? Once, but it was the instructor's fault

Before this one, from whom did you get your last e-mail? Thinkgeek newsletter

Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Home Depot or any hardware/tool store

What do you do most often when you are bored? Sleep, surf the net, write blog posts.

Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire? I don't really care that much and whenever I come across one of these I usually don't even read the whole thing.

Last person you went to dinner with? My boss and the crew I work with.

Ford or Chevy? If we're talking trucks, it's Chevy. As for cars, any of the big Japanese car companies - Honda, Toyota, or Subaru. But I usually get stuck driving our Ford work van.

What are you listening to right now? The humm of my computer's cooling fan

How many tattoos do you have? None now or ever

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The chicken.

I almost drilled into my eye

2006-01-23T19:27:00.000-06:00

Today I was bolting the end piece of a waterslide. It's the very last piece which dumps into the pool. These pieces are always tough because they have to be bolted in place and there's very little room between the seam and the ground and/or concrete - and the last piece is totally enclosed except the very back where it is bolted. The one I was doing today was particularly bad (they're always different because the pool design is always different).

I had just enough room to get my arm behind the seam while laying on the ground. Only the end piece has holes pre-drilled in it, so I have to drill through the end piece out.

While drilling one of the highest holes, the only way I could get the drill in there was lay nearly flat on the ground and stick my arm into the opening up to my shoulder with my elbow bent to get the drill in the right spot.

In this position, my head was at the same height as the drill. I was aware of this and was keeping my head away from the seam, but the drill bit came through a little faster and farther than I expected. I had to jerk my head out of the way to avoid getting drilled in the eye. It could have been bad.

As it happens, the only injury I sustained on that seam was a skinned knuckle.

Telluride Pictures

2006-01-22T21:09:00.000-06:00

Becky Sent me some pictures of the Telluride trip. Here are a few.

First, some shots of the mountains

Here I am standing in front of a bridge that crosses one of the ski trails - there are roads and stuff that cross the trails. There are lodges and houses along the trail - the residents can just ski out from their front door.

That's me.

Here's Sarah cruising down a steep slope

Here's one of the lodges I mentioned - there are some impressive lodges/houses up there.

Here's a shot of the group - we all drove back to MN in a minivan and we all had lots of junk including 4 snowboards.

Scribbler

2006-01-17T20:27:00.000-06:00

A few years ago, I wrote a journaling program and subsequently lost it when I sold the computer I wrote it on - I could get it, or I could just as easily rewrite it, but being as lazy as I am, I searched the internet for a similar program.

And I found scribbler. It's quite similar to the program I wrote - it takes care of opening and naming a text document for a daily journal entry. It's even written in Python, which is what I wrote mine in.

There are a few technical differences. My program started a new file each time it was run and kept them all sorted by date and time. Scribbler keeps only one file per day and also has a browse mode which opens a web browser and points it to the diary directory. Oh, and my program had the option to scramble the entries so that they couldn't be (easily) read with a normal text editor - it would descramble them and open them in an editor to read them.

First non-crazy post since the spinoff of craziness

2006-01-16T21:14:00.000-06:00

I suggested that Becky submit some photos to jones soda. If you don't know, jones soda is this really cool soft drink company that prints customer photos on the bottles. It's a fairly unique and cool idea. I'd post some photos if I wasn't too lazy and stuff. Becky said that she'd already thought of it, but it seems that she's pretty lazy too.

but then she did post a (at least one) photo on there and sent me an e-card about it. Go see her photo and vote for it. Then go look at other photos in the gallery and vote for cool ones that don't have dogs in them - it seems that a lot of jones soda gallery viewers like dogs - sort by most popular and make sure that some non-dog photos get up there. Tell all your friend and tell them to tell all their friends because I don't think that my readership is high enough to make any difference.

Too bad you can't vote "11"

New Blog

2006-01-16T21:10:00.000-06:00

I need to keep the craziness on my main blog to a minimum, so I've started Craziness. Go read that if you want to read my craziness - and pretend that all my past craziness is on there and that you never saw it. I'm sure I'll be filling the new blog with lots and lots of new craziness, so if you're into that sort of thing (you sicko), go read it there.

You may be wrong.

2006-01-13T23:01:00.000-06:00

This is just a crazy rant. You can ignore it.

I have a point, but it'll take a bit of reasoning to fully express the idea that I wish to get across.

A few basic ideas that must be accepted. Some of these may be less relevant than others - remember this is a rant, I might get a bit crazy.

1. There is a definite truth, though we may not know it (none of this "existence is an illution" or "truth is relative" junk). We accept that any assumption, hypothesis, belief, etc is either true or not true based on the facts of reality which stand on their own reguardless of human perception. The state of a thing can change over time, but at any given instant, there is a definite state, though we may be unable to determine what it is/was/will be. An event either happened or did not happen though accounts of the event may change thus becoming more detached from reality which is constant.

2. Our human capacity for knowledge and understanding is limited, though we may be unable to determine or practically reach this limit. This applies to an individual as well as the collective body of human life. Our physical brains are finite and must have some finite capacity/capability.

3. Every human being has a personal world-view or philosophy that is composed of what that person accepts as reality.

4. Every society has a common philosophy that is made up of the average or commonly accepted points in the philosophies of each member of that society. This common philosophy may be weigthed by influence - a more influential/vocal person may contribute more to the common philosophy than the less influential.

5. It has been demonstrated throughout history that these philosophies (personal and common) contain factual errors - they can be wrong. A wise person/society will adapt the philosophy to fit truth as it is discovered - with, of course, a proper level of scepticism requiring a certain amount of "proof". This is constantly happening to us as individuals and our society.

6. What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular. Truth exists as it is reguardless of popular opinion.

7. People can be (are) largely driven by emotional factors and are often unaware of their own true motives. A big one is pride. (I am using the term "emotion" to refer to any motivation that is not based on the desire to uncover factual reality and which may be counterproductive to this pursuit)

8. Appearances are deceiving. What appears to be true may be partially or totally false.

9. People are(can be) stupid. This includes me and you, though we rarely recognize or acknowledge it of ourselves. We are willing to accept an idea without logical reasoning if it appeals to our emotions/desires.

10. People are(can be) smart. With proper logic and detachment from emotional factors, it is possible to refine one's philosophy in order for it to reach a state closer to actual reality.

11. People are selfish. They will hold, defend, and propogate an idea which they may subconciously (or conciously) know to be false if doing so achieves some personal gain. This is obviously counterproductive in reguards to achieveing a more realistic philosophy.

Ok, I think that's about enough to get my point across. If you've read this far, then perhaps you are ready for the point of this post.

The title is "You may be wrong", but the conclution that I now derive is that you ARE wrong.

It is impossible for you or me to have an entirely realistic world-view. There are undoubtedly some beliefs that you and I hold which are false.

It is wise to examine our world-views piece-by-piece in order to determine why we believe what we believe - what facts, what logic is behind each belief - what emotions are behind each belief. To what philosophies do we subscribe simply because it is "public opinion" or some such thing.

Can you accept that a certain philosophy of yours may be false.
Can you accept that a certain philosophy that someone else holds (which perhaps you have scoffed at) may be true(or close to it, we must accept varying degrees of truth).

It seems very arrogant to believe that one's own world-view is entirely accurate.

There are countless examples of this sort of thing throughout history. I will mention a few as they come to me - and I am not talking about superstitious beliefs, I am talking about generally accepted scientific principles.

It was once believed that solid glass is actually a slow moving fluid. This was taught in science texts and generally reguarded as true. It is now believed that solid glass does not flow at all, but that traditional glaziers normally produced glass that would be thicker on one side and would generally align the glass with the thicker end down (perhaps for structural reasons). This gives the appearance that the glass has "flowed" down over time. Sometimes, in fact, a piece of glass is discovered which is thicker at the top than at the bottom - how could flowing account for that.

It was once taught that the earth was the center of the solar system and all the planets, the sun, and the moon revolved around the earth. Today, this is obviously not true. The same goes for the earth being flat. A side note here: it is often speculated that this is in some way related to the teaching of the Christian Bible - this is not true. While christians would have believed this along with everyone else in the world, it is not biblical.

The idea of Spontaneous Generation was once commonly thought to be true - that life could emerge spontaneously from non-living things. For example it was once believed that rats were spontaneously generated from piles of rags, mice from grain, maggots from meat. Aristotle taught this. It is now known to be completely false.

There are examples of such things today. There are many small ones which make shows like "The Myth Busters" interresting. There are bigger ones, but they can be more subtle - otherwise they would be determined to be false and dismissed.

The Kitten Dog

2006-01-08T22:51:00.001-06:00

She's a one and a half year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Tequilla - called Quilla (pronouced like Kia) for short and she lives with my parents in Wyoming. She loves cats, especially kittens - not to eat or to torture, just to be around and play with.

Thomas brought a 3 month old kitten with him for Christmas. At first it was afraid of Quilla and would hiss and run and stuff. But Quilla kept at it until the kitten would tolerate her, and eventually play with her. When Thomas went home, taking the kitten with him, Quilla seemed to mope around the house - it was sad.

My dad is a vet and his clinic is right next to the house, so Quilla spends a lot of time with the cats and other animals there as well. There is a stray kitten that someone brought in which they haven't found a home for yet. This thing will not let anyone near it - not even Quilla, at first. Quilla worked on this kitten and now it will let her near, but still not anyone else.

When I was there, I went down to the clinic to help my dad with something and while he was busy with something else, I was looking around at his equipment and dog breed charts and stuff. Quilla came up to me, looked at me like she wanted something, walked over to a doorway, and looked back at me as if she wanted me to follow. So I followed. And she walked to another doorway and waited for me. I followed. She eventually led me to the kennel room with all the cats (all two that is). She looked at the cats and looked at me. "Meet my friends", she seemed to say. So I took a look at the cats. The stray that my dad had told me about wasn't around - she runs loose in the clinic and hides whenever people are around. "Are these your cats?" I asked Quilla. The cats meowed, I meowed back. Quilla gave me a funny look.

She's a funny dog.

Telluride

2006-01-05T19:54:00.000-06:00

I skied at Telluride yesterday. It was awesome.

I was in Wyoming for Christmas, hanging out with the family. My cousin Liz lives and works in Telluride and her sisters, another cousin, and a friend went out to see her, then all of them went down to Arizona to visit another cousin.

I met them in Telluride when they got back from Arizona and we went skiing. It was awesome.

I've skied at a few hills back East (Peek'n Peak, Holiday Valley) and at Alyeska in Alaska, but none of them were quite as nice as Telluride. The Eastern "Mountains" are just little hills compared to the actual mountains in Colorado and Alaska. Alyeska is on a real mountain, but it's not very fancy and they don't have the variety of terrain or as many runs as Telluride.

However, Telluride is also very up-scale, which intimidates me. There are "houses" in the $10-20 Million range. I guess that Tom Cruise has a house there. Everything is expensive. Alyeska is more down-to-earth, red-neck friendly

Why I use Linux

2006-01-01T02:39:00.000-06:00

Pretty much everybody that I know knows that I don't care much for Microsoft junk. This sentiment goes way back to my early days as a computer geek - to before I knew there was any such thing as linux and I though that Unix was something that was just for big business computers and Mainframes and stuff.

I remember when I was first introduced to the concept that there are alternatives to MS Windows. Windows 95 was the top dog at the time and I'd reinstall it every few months in order to keep my system running smoothly. I figured out a lot about installing Windows 95.

Anyway, I was sitting on the toilet reading a computer magazine and came across this article about Windows alternatives. There was FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux, and maybe another one or two. This was nineteen ninety something, so they weren't too well known or advanced as far as usability on the PC or suitability as a Windows replacement. But they were all free - I'd known about free software, it's called shareware. But I had no concept of open source or free-as-in-speech software and didn't get it until much later on. So I read the article and thought, "Well, that's interesting", then forgot all about it for a while. I may have done some searches on the internet (this was before google's domination as a search engine, so I was probably using AltaVista or something), and I think I downloaded some code, but I didn't know what to do with it or how to turn it into a running operating system.

Then, some time later, somebody gave me a RedHat 5.something CD. He'd gotten it from a local computer users group that had a few people experimenting with linux. I installed it. I figured out how to shut the system down. I couldn't get the GUI to work (I was thinking that maybe I could get Quake 3 running on there). No GUI and none of the DOS commands that I knew work (I was quite familiar with a DOS command line at this point). But, as I said, I did figure out the shutdown command - after rebooting the hard way a few times and corrupting the filesystem. Then I thought, "Eh, forget it" and reinstalled Windows on the system.

Then I went to Alaska. I got an old computer from the Good Will for $50 or something. I had a lot of time with not much to do, so I got on the internet and started reading about linux. I found Debian and started downloading the floppy installation set - it was like 14 floppies or something. This was annoying my uncle whom I was living with because he only had dial-up and only one phone line - but I did most of my downloading at night. I got that base system installed only to discover that you have to connect this to the internet and download more stuff if you want anything useful. So I played with it for a while, but never got it to much of a useful state. I read everything that I could find about installing and using linux and I ordered a Debian Linux Bible that came with an install cd - the only problem is that the old piece of junk computer can't boot from a cd. But I got something working and played with it some more. All this time, I'm learning to use the linux command line quite well, though there were many unix concepts that I didn't quite get (it's really philosophically different from a certain perspective).

I moved around a bit in Alaska, all the time reading about linux if I didn't have a system to play with it on. While living in Kenai, I got Redhat 7 or 8 installed with the Gnome Desktop Environment for a GUI and got it on the internet - used it for email, web browsing, printing, etc. While I was staying with a guy near the town of North Pole (it's not far from Fairbanks), I used his printer to print the book Linux From Scratch (some old version circa summer 2002) - it was a couple hundred pages anyhow - oh, I also printed the Linux Users Guide (LUG) available from tldp.org. But I didn't have a computer to install it on at the time.

I moved back to Pennsylvania, stopping in Minnesota to work for a while. All this time, I'm reading linux stuff wherever I can get it. At some point, I have a caseless computer in a wooden drawer that I'm bringing around with me (I'm a bit of a vagabond, so I travel a lot). The thing was an AMD K5 or K6 - anyhow it was pretty slow. I'd been experimenting with a dual-booting setup with Windows and Linux on the same machine - I wasn't quite ready to completely give up my reliance on Windows. By this time, I was quite familiar with dual-booting, disk partitioning, linux filesystems, the fat32 filesystem, the bootloaders lilo and grub, and the configuration of these bootloaders.

I don't even remember how many computers I'd gone through in all of this, let alone all the different configurations of each (add a harddrive here, try a different distro there, etc). I'd get one free from somebody or throw one together from some spare parts I'd picked up or just had laying around. I even bought an old piece of junk from a local computer store for $130 - used it for quite a while too. By this time, I was dual-booting linux and WindowsXP, though for a long time I was using WinXP in a fat32 filesystem so I'd be able to modify it from within linux. And I was using open source software in windows as well - notably the gimp.

Somewhere in there, I started playing with Python which is a cool interpreted programming language. I've always wanted to get into programming more, but have never had the ambition.

I got an 800 Mhz AMD Athlon (already pretty old by this point, but faster than the PIII-450 I was using) from a friend for $100 or something - the motherboard was shot, so I had to find a replacement. The processor was a Slot A which had already been phased out by AMD. I called a couple of local places to see if they'd have an old Slot A board around - one place told me that they had one, but when I got there (an hour's drive) it turned out to be a Socket A afterall and therefore no good to me. I finally found one through a Yahoo search and ordered it - it might have been the very last retail Slot A board ever sold. I got the thing up and running with 256 meg o' ram, and an 80 gig harddrive I'd been carrying around for a while (swapping from one old crappy computer to another not quite as old or crappy).

I had the Athlon 800 for some time - I gave the PIII 450 to my brother John 'cause his PIII 700 got toasted in travel and he said that the 450 was plenty for what he was doing - I just swapped harddrives and maybe gave it a ram boost.

I finally got the time and ambition to install Linux From Scratch on the Athlon. I was staying with the Greene's at the time and they had cable internet, so having my computer downloading all the time wasn't a problem. LFS takes a very long time and a lot of work to install. Basically, you start with a very minimal pre-compiled base install (or you could start from any other linux distro). From this, you compile the basic packages and install them into a clean filesystem tree. As soon as this base setup is functional, you chroot into it, so you compile everything else from within the system that you just compiled. Everything is compiled from source which takes a long time, and there is no package management system in the basic setup - you can install the package manager from any distro you like after the basic system is up and running. Every package can be configured/patched/tailored to your liking. There are many choices to be made as there can be several alternatives for a particular tool. So I got LFS installed - it took a while because I was also working construction full time.

I had LFS working, but there were a few things I didn't like about it - I liked how everything gets compiled from source, but resolving dependencies by hand is a bit straining and things started to get a bit cluttered.

Then I discovered Gentoo. It's like LFS, but the install is automated and it includes what might be the best package management system ever developed. The package database includes just about every piece of open source software you could ever want - the actual source code is obtained from the developer's website or another mirror - gentoo does not keep an archive of source code for all packages. Anybody can make a package for some new software and submit it to be added to the database - so there are packages for just about everything (open source that is).

Then I sold the Athlon to a cousin for $100. I talked her into keeping Gentoo installed on it (it also had WinXP on it of course), but as far as I know, she never uses Gentoo (she still has the computer, it's having some issues though). But it still has Gentoo installed on it.

I did not replace the Athlon 800 right away. I did not have high speed internet at the time and I decided to take a break from tinkering with computers for financial and other reasons (I also did not have a job at this point).

Then I got a job - a job building waterslides. I went to Orlando for a couple of months and decided to get another old computer and install linux on it to serve as a sort of internet kiosk for me and my roommates (5 of us). It was old (don't remember the specs), but it worked - I had a 120 Gb HD in there. I think that I eventually abandoned it in the back of someone's truck - never to be seen again. Or maybe I gave it to someone else, I don't remember. But I got rid of it when I built an Athon64 3000+ with 1Gb Ram, the 120 Gb HD from the old computer and a 160 Gb HD, a dual-layer DVD burner, dual gigabit lan on the motherboard, PCI-X, a super lan boy case with carrying strap, and some other nice features. I built it while on the road after the Orlando job. I installed Gentoo on it of course - this time without WinXP. My Athon64 processor has never run a bit of Microsoft code.

Most jobs don't last as long as Orlando, so I had to leave it at home a lot. I decided to buy a laptop. The last time that I brough the desktop on the road, the motherboard started having some hardware malfunctions. Two of the memory slots don't work anymore and the gigabit lan's don't work at all anymore - I had to get a pci 100 Mbit card. And after the trip home, I'm not sure that the motherboard will work at all because I didn't fully reinstall it after taking it out to see if I could get the lan's to work - I only put 2 of the 9 motherboard screws back in, then brought it the 900 miles home in a rickety cargo van which I'm sure is what caused it to mess up in the first place.

I also got my laptop on that trip, so I don't need the desktop anymore. I think that I'm going to replace the motherboard, shed a tear, install WindowsXP, and give it to my mom and dad. They could use a nice desktop. Their only computer is an old IBM laptop that they pretty much use as if it were a desktop (don't think it's been off the desk in over a year). When I say "they", I mean my dad because my mom doesn't use it much at all. I'm hoping that may change if I give them the desktop though, because most of her family uses email now (including her mom), so it'd be a good way to keep in touch.

Yeah, I still got WinXP on my laptop - only for my gps software. If I could find a linux alternative for that, I'd be set.

I told Mom about the chair

2006-01-01T01:03:00.000-06:00

Today, I told my mom about an incident that happened several years ago. I've been holding it back from her because I was pretty sure that it would upset her and I don't like to upset her. She said something today that caused me to realize that it wouldn't upset her so bad.

We got some "new" chairs one time - I don't know when. They weren't new, just new to us. They're kind of crappy - my parents still have at least one of them and it makes a lot of noise whenever you sit in it. I think that the parts are bolted together and the bolts aren't that tight and the general design isn't so good, so all the joints twist and creak whenever you shift your weight at all. Some of them had arms, some did not. The chair in question did have arms.

I think that Thomas was still in High School and I was recently graduated. We were rough housing or sort of fighting or something - it probably wasn't anything serious, we were just playing around. I don't remember the events exactly, but one of us pushed the other down or something and we broke the arm off of the chair. Now, this was not a simple break at the joint or anything that could be repaired without replacing some wood - and we both understood this. We looked at each other and came to an unspoken understanding that could be interpreted as "We have to get rid of it - she'll never miss it if it just dissapears." We may have exchanged a few words vocally, but we both understood - that's how we always communicatehttp://esvn.umputun.com/trac.cgi/ticket/38d, we just understood each other - we can carry on a conversation with grunts and half-words and understand each other perfectly.

So we went to town on the chair. We broke it into about 37 little pieces, carried it out to the burn pile along with the garbage (there was never a shortage of garbage waiting to be burned), and we toasted it. Now there's effectively no trace that the chair ever existed. Out of sight, out of mind. She probably doesn't even know how many of these chairs she has anyway, I mean they're spread all over the house. Whenever someone needed a chair somewhere, they'd grab one from the kitchen or wherever there was one not being used - with no concern over whether or not it was ever returned. ( When it came to meals of large gatherings, these chairs would be rounded up from wherever they'd been taken - but I doubt that anyone knew exactly how many we had. )

So the chair was gone and forgotten. No one ever missed it. She would never have known if I hadn't told her just this very day. And as it turns out, she didn't get the chairs in the first place - my dad did, and she never really cared much for them. So nobody was upset. Thomas and I had fun disposing of the chair.

I think that same summer we played catch with a baseball bat and were trying to spin it in such a way that the other guy couldn't catch it. Lots of dodging was involved.

Billings, MT

2005-12-24T17:17:00.000-06:00

Billings doesn't seem to be much of a city. It may be big for Montana, but compared to any major city, it's tiny and a bit run-down.

I got in at 3 am thismorning (on my way to Greybull, Wyoming for Christmas). Thomas is supposed to pick me up on his way through - he's driving to Greybull from Tacoma. But he got a late start and won't be here until later in the afternoon.

So I decided that, since I'm not broke for a change, I'd get a hotel room for the remainder of the night rather than sleeping at the airport (it's not fun, I've done it a few times before) . Even though the city is small, the airport is small, and it's Christmas Eve, the hotel will send a shuttle at 3 am. I got the room for $50 with a late checkout time of 1 pm.

So I slept until about noon, got up, showered, studied the map of Billings (mapping software on my laptop), and checked out. On the map, I was looking for a place to get some lunch and somewhere to hang out while I wait for Thomas.

I looked up a few restaurants, and wanting to try something local rather than fastfood or a major chain like Perkins. There are several Mexican restaurants and being in the mood for such fare, I decided on a place called Rocket Burritos (it's called this on the map - the store front proclaims "Rockets Gourmet Wraps & Sodas"). As for a place to chill while waiting for Tom, I found a place called "Your Place or Mine Cybercafe". The burrito place is on the way to the cybercafe which is about 2 miles from the hotel. There's no need to waste money on a taxi for such a short distance, so I asked the hotel clerk if I could leave my bags there and set out on foot (even though I only have some lazy slip-on shoes which are lousy for any serious walking - I got some pretty bad blisters this way once).

On my way to Rockets, my expectations began to drop as it became appartent that I was passing through the slums. I passed a women's prison, a correctional probation and parole center, a homeless shelter, many run-down and possibly abandoned residences, another mexican restaurant that looked like it'd give you severe food poisoning just by walking in the door (that's when I decided that I may have to abandon my plans for the Rocket Burrito, but I was going to check it out anyway), and a railroad track where I had to wait a minute or two for the train to move as it was at a dead stop when I arrived at the intersection.

As I got closer to Rockets, the scenery began to loose the appearance of the slums - this gave me some hope. I got there and the sign informed me that this was Rockets Gourmet Wraps and Sodas - that's cool, burritos are a kind of wrap. Now some of you may be familiar with Chipotle Mexican Grill and possibly Moe's southwest Grill (don't go to Moe's webpage, it has the annoying background audio) - these places are good and all, I mean they have pretty good burritos, but I knew that Rockets had a certain unique something when, after choosing a steak burrito, the server asked me what kind of tortilla I wanted it on. "Oh," I said in surprise, thinking "they offer a choice of tortillas, sweet." I chose the Garlic and Herb. They have a nice selection of coffee and such, so I ordered a chai tea as well.

The burrito was good, the chai was good, the employees know their stuff, and the place has the atmosphere of a hip coffee shop. I'd recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in Billings and looking for a place to eat lunch. It's a bit off the beaten path on Business 90 (1st Ave N) between N 28th and N 29th streets at Latitude N45° 46.92', Longitude W108° 30.357' - or somewhere near there, the location in my map software may be a bit off (I could get an exact location if I went there and fired up my GPS, but I didn't and I won't).

The cybercafe was another matter entirely. It may be hip, but I wouldn't know because it was closed, but by the appearance of the building, it isn't so hip anyway (keep in mind, though, that external appearance is a poor indication of internal hipness). I can't blame them for being closed on Christmas Eve. So I decided to hoof it back to the hotel and see about connecting to the internet in the lobby.

On the way back to the hotel, I found a little used book store and decided to see what I could find - well, I got nothing better to do. I found about 7 books of varying subjects all for about $50 (one book was $20 by itself). It was a nice little book shop, nice atmosphere and all. It's called "A Few Books More" and is at 520 N 32nd St. They have a nice selection and some pretty old stuff that might be nice in a collection, but I don't know much about such things.

Then back through the slums and to the hotel to await my brother's arrival where I now sit writing this post. I took a different route on the way back to see a bit more of the city. Looking at the sky and surrounding mesas, it seems that the city exists only because those mesas allow it to exist - it seems as though it doesn't belong, but the land has decided to tolerate it.

Actually, the city grew rapidly after its founding, earning it the nickname the Magic City. It continues to grow steadily to this day while other Montana cities show a decline. It is the largest city in a 500 mile radius and is a major center of commerce for people of Montana and nearby Wyoming.

Airport post - over a month old

2005-12-24T17:15:00.000-06:00

I wrote this on my way to Orlando for Thanksgiving, then forgot about it and never uploaded it. Well, here it is.

Airport Wireless
$6.95 for 24 hrs of access, but airport sites are free

The old way: Wander around the airport until you find a working arrivals/departures display. Then wait for your flight to scroll on by, unless you're too early and it isn't being displayed yet. And stand there looking like an idiot.

The new way: Fire up your laptop with its wireless 802.11x ethernet card, connect to the airports network, scoff at the $6.95 access fee (I'm not paying that!), load the free FlightArrivals.com webpage, enter your airline and flight number, and there you have it. All the information you ever wanted to know about the flight - where it's coming from (Denver), what time it left there, the temperature there, what type of aircraft it is, when it is expected to arrive (at MSP), its current speed and altitude, expected air traffic delays, the temperature at the destination, the expected departure time (from MSP), the scheduled arrival time at the next destination (MCO), the temperature there.

Now my only problem is the lack of power outlets here at MSP gate G22. My power hungry laptop is longing for a steady supply of electricity, but the only outlet in sight would require that I sit on the floor over by the pay phones. Come on now, I need to keep my battery charged up for the flight.

My Gum Fell Apart or I Took A Dive

2005-12-19T20:58:00.000-06:00

Have you ever been chewing a piece of gum and had it disintegrate in your mouth? It happened to me today. It just falls apart, it won't stick together anymore.

The first time that this ever happened to me was in Junior High when I was sick and in the nurse's office. I don't remember where I got the gum, but it was a brand that I don't often chew. It fell apart (you can tell when it's about to fall apart because it gets really soft and gritty-like, then it falls apart). It was so gross. I spit it out in the garbage can. I figured it had something to do with being sick and anti-bodies or fever or something.

It's happened a few time since and hasn't always been when I was sick. I think that it might have something to do with how long you have been chewing and what you've been eating/drinking. I think that it may have something to do with enzymes. You get enzymes in your saliva while eating and I think that chewing gum will also trigger the release of enzymes in saliva. Also, I think that gum is designed to fall apart so that if you swallow it, it won't get stuck in your intestines for seven years like all the kids in grade school said - instead it breaks apart in your stomach and is digested like anything else.

The gum disintegration was today, yesterday I slipped and fell while climbing on the steel support arms for a waterslide.

I was only about 4 feet off the ground, so it wasn't life threatening or anything. I was trying to move from a lower to upper arm. The distance was a little too far to get my foot onto the upper arm while standing on the lower. I had a few good hand holds, so I tried to brace one foot against the vertical column (from which the arms radiate) and pull myself up to where I could get a foot on the upper arm. I use this trick a lot while climbing columns (which I do often - usually without a safety harness which would be nearly useless in such situations), but this time, my shoe was a bit muddy and the column had a bit of condensation on it.

So when I jumped to pull myself up to the upper arm, my foot immediately slipped down the column, I lost my handholds, and I fell. I caught the arm I had been standing on with my crotch (just like in the cartoons), spun around it (upside down), caught something with my hand to keep from falling head-first, turned myself rightside up, and landed feet first in the mud and water. I had been wearing my clean shoes for working inside the slide (and on the columns and anywhere else that we don't want to track mud).

Now my clean shoes are all muddy. It takes me a few minutes to recover - the pain to my crotch wasn't so bad, I've been hit worse there. I scraped the inside of my thigh and twisted my knee. The knee wasn't bothering me much yesterday, but when I woke up this morning, it was quite sore and stiff. It doesn't hurt to put weight on it, but it hurts to bend it.

It'll be alright though. I got these heavy-duty bull knees or something - they've taken plenty a beating and recovered just fine. I don't think it's ever taken more than a few days for a knee to recover from any injury. Someone threw a huge rock (twice the size of my fist) at me once - it hit me right on the kneecap from a side angle, taking my leg out from under me. And I landed on the knee that had been hit. It was sore for a day or two, then it was fine

Lifetime FitnessWhat I do

2005-12-17T18:45:00.000-06:00

Take the virtual tour of the Lifetime Fitness Center. Notice the waterslides. That's what I build. They're not exactly like the ones in the pictures though. I'm not sure where the pictures for the tour were taken, but it's a slightly different slide design from a different company.

When we're in there building the slides, the place doesn't look nearly as nice as it does in the tour. The concrete isn't poured outside and it's a big mud/snow/ice pit (yeah, we're building the outdoor slides in the winter).

My take on Ecclesiastes 1:3-11

2005-12-12T22:04:00.000-06:00

The point, as I see it, is not that we should not try to better ourselves or enjoy our lives, but that we should not think too highly of ourselves or our accomplishments.

We should enjoy life and try to improve the world around us, but we should do so from a certain perspective and not get too upset over worldly matters.

Return to the Technology Rant

2005-12-11T20:41:00.000-06:00

Ok, I'm sorry about this, but I just have to clarify my sentiments in my earlier rant on technology and stuff.

Get a Bible and read Ecclesiastes 1:3-11 (It's in the Old Testament for those of you not too familiar with the Bible, so you won't find it in one of those little pocket New Testament's - it's right after Proverbs). This passage states, much better than I could, what I was trying to say about technology (and all human endeavor).

I may not post much for a while, I'm working a lot and I need to take some time for sleep.

How my links work

2005-12-10T22:41:00.000-06:00

Here's how the changing text in my links section work:

It's all HTML with CSS. I use an inline style section rather than a separate page. Go ahead and view the source of my blog to see what I'm talking about and do a google search for a CSS reference or tutorial.

I came up with the changing text thing on my own back when I was learning CSS (on my own). I haven't done any CSS or Web development since creating my current blog template (oh, maybe a few modifications to the template every now and then). So I had to take a look at it to remind myself how it works.

There's a built-in hover class for link tag (the a tag). This is some kind of virtual class or something, like a:visited for links that are in the recent browser history. hover works by treating any link that the mouse is over as a hover class. It's really easy to use this to change the color (or any other property) of the link text. Changing the text itself is a bit trickier, but not much.

I made two new classes (you can do this with CSS) called on and off they are classes of the span tag within the a tag. This is where the magic is.

a span.off {color: #000;display: none;}
a:hover span.off {display: inline;}
a span.on {display:inline;}
a:hover span.on {display:none;}

Normally, the on object is displayed and the off object is not displayed, but the mouse pointer reverses this. With this code in the style section of the page, all that is needed is to invoke the proper classes within the links. My links look something like this (it's hard to get the blogger editor to display html tags properly - it's always trying to interpret them as actual tags. I added spaces around the <'s and >'s to prevent this.)

< class="block" href="URL" >< class="on">some text< / span >< class="off">some other text< / span >< / a >

This is just a few simple tags, a link with some span's in it. Without the CSS code above, both spans would display normally. With it, only one or the other will be displayed depending on whether the mouse is over the link or not.

The link's block class changes the link from an inline object to a block object with a specified width. This ensures that the mouse will be within the off class if it is within the on class and I don't have to worry about the length of the text. Otherwise, it would be possible for the off link to be shorter, and so the mouse may not be over the link when it is off though it is over the link when it is on. This would cause the state to switch very rapidly if the mouse were in the right position. You can see that on my page, there is a wide area past the text which also causes the link to change - this area is part of the link and you should be able to click on it to follow the link (though I wouldn't guarantee this in IE) .

here's a link for you to play with that uses the css code. Try to use it in comments... I don't know if it will work.

Gmail The best webmail available

In the blogger composer preview, this code does not work because it is not displayed with my template, so the CSS code isn't there. This reveals a flaw with my current setup. If, for some reason, the CSS isn't used, both spans will be displayed. I need to add a third class that is never displayed (in my system) which will act as a seperator if they are both displayed(without the CSS).

I'll never go back

2005-12-08T22:57:00.000-06:00

All this talk about web applications and software as a service - with a monthly fee, all data stored online in a virtual drive accessible from anywhere. This all seems like some crazy Micro$oft-is-trying-to-get-all-my-money thing.

But one such application (if you can force it into this category) is gmail. gmail is awesome. I've never really liked the other online email programs, always preferring to have a real POP3 account from which I download and store all my email on my computer. But, probably, the main reason for this sentiment was all the ads on those email websites. And they kept getting more intrusive and annoying. It started with the flashing, and then the video and the hit the turkey to win a free laptop computer. And then, the most annoying of all, the advertisements started playing sounds. (A note to all web page/advertisement designers: unrequested sound from a web page is very, very annoying. You must not assume that your page will be the only page a user is viewing at any given time, or that they are devoting their entire attention to the web browser. They may be trying to listen to some music, watch a movie, write a paper for school, or any number of things while your page is loading in the background. And when you page starts to make noise, while in the background, the response is not "Ooh, where is that awesome sound coming from", but rather, "where is that annoying racket coming from". And then they find the webpage that is causing the disturbance and promptly get rid of it. No more sound, no more page. They may not have paid any attention to your ad anyway, but now they will definitely not patronize it. That's one definite "not a sale". Or if it wasn't from an ad, one false hit for your hit counter. So don't put any automatic sounds on your page because people close pages for that junk). So I didn't like the web based email. Gmail changed all that. They have ads, but they're not invasive like all the others. And they give you a ton of storage. And they have some really cool search features that email browsing applications don't have. And the thread view is very cool. It may confuse my dad when I send him and email of which the entire message body is composed of one word ("Probably"), but when I email my brother (who uses gmail), with simply the word "Yeah", or something like that, he knows exactly what I'm talking about - because of the thread view. And I don't ever quote the original message in a reply because it's already there in the thread view. It's so cool.

Well, I'm never switching back - I can tell you that. I'm sorry if this sounded like an infomercial. I just think that it's so cool.

A Wizard of Earthsea

2005-12-04T14:17:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid, in junior high or so, I read a book entitled A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. To this day, I regard it as one of the best books I have ever read (along with the others in the Earthsea series). It is certainly my favorite book in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. I've read it two or three times over the years.

Unfortunately, the Sci-Fi channel has produced an Earthsea movie based on the Le Guin book(s?). I have not seen the movie yet, but from what I have seen of it, it looks like total garbage. I am going to watch it - against my better judgment - just so that I know exactly how badly they messed up this great story.

I suggest that, if you haven't seen it, you avoid it at all costs. And whether you've seen the movie or not, I suggest that you read the book, even if you're not really into fantasy. There's a new printing available - because of the movie I guess - it's got some artwork from the movie on the cover (just ignore that junk).

I'm going to see if I can get it on audio book for traveling.

Helping Grandma

2005-11-30T21:06:00.000-06:00

I got back from Orlando, and my mom was in town on her way from PA to WY. My grandma was there too because she was in PA also.

I just found out that my next job has been pushed back until December 15th, so I have nothing to do until then. My mom convinced me to come with her to my grandma's to help her for a few days.

It's nice. I got a lot of family up here, so I'm seeing a lot of people I haven't seen for a while.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to help my grandma with. I'll probably try to do as little as possible, but it's nice to just hang out with Grandma.

Thanksgiving in the sunshine

2005-11-28T19:00:00.000-06:00

I've come down to Orlando for Thanksgiving along with my brother Thomas and sister Karen. We all got together at my sister Marie's house. It was a pretty good dinner and visit and all. I've stayed a few days longer than Thomas and Karen - I'm still here in fact.

Today I went and rode the waterslide that I built last year - I had to leave for another job before it was completed, so I didn't get to test it out with the rest of the crew. It's pretty cool.

Possum

2005-11-11T16:48:00.000-06:00

This is an update on the Generator/Fire incident.

I guess that the generator just ran out of gas, which is bad because it's diesel and it was under heavy load at the time - and it a huge generator.

But there's a rumor floating around that a 'possum got into the wiring and got fried. It's probably not true, but it's a good story anyway.

The 'possum featured on the left is from TGS, featured on the homestarrunner.com/tgsmenu.html - check it out.

Police and Fire Fighters

2005-11-07T23:07:00.000-06:00

Tonight, we were working late. The waterslide is all built. We were just cleaning it with some scrub brushes and a pressure washer (Tomorrow we will do some touch-up paint).

We were working kind-of late in order to get all the cleaning done tonight. We did the outside slide first and moved inside just as it was beginning to get dark. Inside there are nice, big lights - so the loss of daylight isn't a problem.

So we're inside, almost all done, and we're spraying water all over the place. The fiberglass, the steel structure, the concrete floor, the stucco walls, the windows, and everything else near the slide (including us) is soaking wet.

This isn't the first time we've done this and everything in the room is waterproof (It is a pool room after all). There are a few things that aren't fully installed yet, but any exposed wiring should not be connected to a power source.

Anyway, all of a sudden the lights start flickering. These are massive, high powered lights and there several dozen of them - it's pretty much daylight in there. So now it's like a rave with some massive strobe lights as we're washing the slide. Then the lights start going out completely - in banks. All the lights on the east side go out first, then the next ones over and so on until all the lights in the pool room are out.

So we get some flashlights out and keep working - we are in no way responsible for the lights.

As I'm working on scrubbing a section of fiberglass, I hear one of my co-workers yell something - it's really hard to understand each other because we have a gas powered pressure washer running in there and the sound reverberates such that it's impossible to understand anyone who's not right next to you anyhow.

But I thought that I heard someone yell something about fire. So I get down off the lift that I'm on in order to check it out. I can kind-of smell some smoke, but it's not heavy and I don't see any flames or anything. I start walking towards the west end of the building where the other guys are.

Then one guy comes back and says "No, it's not a fire, it's the generator". I'm thinking that it must be related to the lights, but I didn't know they were on a generator. From outside, you can see heavy black smoke pouring out of the back of the building and it smells like diesel smoke. We are in no way responsible for the generator. We go back to work and finish up using our flashlights.

As we are wrapping things up to head back to the hotel, a police officer appears in the parking lot and starts asking us about what's going on. We have no idea. He says that the fire department is on the way.

About this time, we also notice that the surge tank (or whatever the thing is that the pool guys were filling earlier) still has a hose pumping water into it and is now overflowing onto the ground. This is also absolutely not our responsibility.

The security guard who is supposed to be on duty (The have 24 hour on-site security) is nowhere to be found and the cop is unable to contact him.

So the Fire Department shows up (and maybe a few more cops or something). And we take off for the hotel which is just on the other side of the interstate. As we are pulling into the hotel parking lot, we notice that there are news helicopters circling the area (like vultures).

At this point, I'm a bit disappointed that we'd left because with the news people interested and due to the fact that we were the only people around when the incident occurred, we could have been on the news - eh, whatever.

So tomorrow, we may get blamed for setting the building on fire or destroying the generator or something (They'll probably be looking for someone to blame and they already don't like us very much).

$2500 Star Trek DVD collection

2005-11-07T22:03:00.000-06:00

Just follow the link. It's a 212 disc DVD collection for anyone who wants to own everything ever released with the Star Trek name.

San Antonio

2005-10-31T18:50:00.000-06:00

I am now in San Antonio, Texas. Building a waterslide that is exactly like about 5 that I've already built in various locations around the country. It creates a bit of a sense of deja vu.

I'm sorry about the last few posts. I guess I was having a bit of a pessimistic spell. I'm better now. But I still don't think that technology is going to save the world. And I do like to play with cool new stuff.

$900 Books

2005-10-24T23:40:00.001-05:00

Do an Amazon.com search (I'm implying that this is a book search) for just about anything (I searched for "Dirk Gently" - the books we are going to look at most likely have nothing to do with the search term). Now sort the results by price, highest to lowest and check out some of the titles. There are some pretty interresting ones. And some pretty high prices (these are professional books - for doctors and aerospace engineers and stuff).

Here's a good title from my search:

Biomaterials and Biodegradable Polymers and Macromolecules: Current Research and Industrial Applications (European Materials Research Society Symposia Proceedings) by by F. Burny, A. Steinbûchel

it's only $397.95 The most expensive was Seas at the Millenium by C. Sheppard at $940.00

It's hard to imagine paying that much for a single book. But the people who do buy them probably have bookshelves full of them.

A bit more on technology

2005-10-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

The more advanced our technology becomes, the more dependent we become until we cannot survive without it.

This is what bothers me.

Oh yeah, the question mark after the Bubonic plague in the previous post is because I was not sure that there is a cure for it. It seems to come and go on its own. We now know how it is spread and can control this somewhat. We can treat it with antibiotics, but this does not always work and it must be treated quickly (as soon as symptoms appear).

Technology?

2005-10-07T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, technology can help prevent and cure disease. But there will always be diseases and death. I don't think that technology will ever entirely defeat disease. And I do not believe that it is possible to entirely prevent death.

Furthermore, though we have defeated many major diseases such as Polio (and Bubonic Plague?), I don't think that people are generally any healthier than in the past - except for specific times and places such as London after the Industrial Revolution where there are major specific causes of health problems (pollution, etc).

Certain health conditions are more of a problem now than even in recent history. Cancer and Heart disease for example.

There is no technology that can heal the human body. The body must heal itself, technology is only able to push it along a bit and provide the proper conditions for healing.

The medical industry today, controlled by a capitalist society, is focused on selling pills and treatments, not on curing or eliminating diseases. It is all business. In the extreme case, psychological conditions are being invented along with pills to treat them with the apparent goal of getting everyone hooked on some prescription that will solve all of their problems. Why do anti-depressants increase suicide rates among teenagers? Isn't that kind-of the opposite of what anti-depressants are supposed to do.

I'm sorry, this is all rambling. I'll try to do some research, get some sources, etc. But right now, I'm working 10 hour days - 7 days/week, so I don't have much time.

Away for a while

2005-10-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

I haven't been on for a while. I don't have much time now. But I have been reading you comments and have more to say on the subject. I will write a longer post soon.

Back on the road

2005-09-21T21:08:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back on the road building waterslides. It's quite an adjustment after having so much time off. My muscles are sore, but it's good for my wallet.

Yes, they have a webpage

2005-09-18T22:57:00.000-05:00

Read the previous post... especially at the end.

More on the Advancement of the Human Race

2005-09-18T22:19:00.000-05:00

From Sarah (quoted from a comment):

Technology is nice (it's going to get me a better paying job) But there is nothing that compares with being up at 7 in the morning and watching the sun rise over lake superior.

Yes. Technology is nice. But that's about all it is. It (arguably) makes our lives easier, but the only satisfaction that it brings is empty, temporary. It does not bring true happiness. It does not increase one's capacity for love. Some may say that it can heal disease and injury. Perhaps some, but mostly I think that it just prolongs death which cannot be avoided. It can pacify, turn people into zombies in front of some sort of video display - withdrawn from human contact.

Yes, technological training and experience can lead to a better job, but does a better job make you happier? A lousy job can surely make you miserable regardless of pay. What do we need jobs for anyway except to perpetuate our technological culture. We could all live on self-sufficient homesteads - perhaps in small, loosely governed communities - where if you don't contribute to the good of the community, you get kicked out. Would we be any worse for it? Many would certainly not like to give up their mind-numbing entertainment devices.

Anyways, I think I might go off and become a hermit on some remote island or something. Or maybe start an organic farming community if I can find a good piece of land that hasn't been raped by modern farming methods. There must be some such community in existence somewhere. I could just join an existing one; but they're probably all run by some religious cult or something. I wonder if they'd have a webpage.

a Firefox book

2005-09-18T21:51:00.000-05:00

Firefox is just about the best web browser available.

This book is for people who are tired of Microsoft Internet Explorer crashing all the time, running slowly, and allowing pop-ups, spyware, etc. (I know they have blockers now, but firefox had blockers first and still works better.)

I use firefox as much as possible - if I'm using someone's computer and they don't have it. I will usually install it.

Anyway, this book is interesting, but you don't need to read it to use firefox. Just go and download it at this web site.

The advancement of the human race

2005-09-17T20:10:00.000-05:00

This is just a thought that was running through my head one day - but kindof building up for several years.

Humans, as a whole, are not as advanced as they think they are. Compared to people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, or in fact as far back in recorded history as we can go, people today are not much different.

The only real advancement has been in the collection, organization, and transfer of information - this is the root of all technological advancement. And how much has this really helped the human race? It has not helped to end war - only to make the devices of war more devastating. It has not made people any less selfish. It has not been used to protect the environment.

The apparent benefits of technology are all subjective. Is quality of life really improved? Are people really more healthy? or any happier? I don't think so.

On the other hand, technology is part of the world today and I do not suggest that we turn away from it. But I don't think that any technological advancement is ever really going to make the world a better place.

No more beard

2005-09-17T20:03:00.000-05:00

Just in case you haven't seen me for a while:

I don't have a beard anymore. I got sick of it. And since shaving, I've realized how nice it is to not have a beard (or long mustache).

When you don't have a beard or mustache:
It doesn't get in your mouth when you're trying to eat.
You don't get food (and drink) stuck in it. (I had begun to avoid all sorts of sauces for this reason)
You don't get long beard hairs in your food.
It doesn't get caught in your coat zipper.
You don't have to worry about it getting all misshappen when you lay face-down.

But I'm not saying that I will never grow a beard again. The next time it will probably be a huge hippie beard.

2005 Dodge Ram Hemi

2005-09-14T17:41:00.000-05:00

The engine is going out in my truck. But I needed something to drive last weekend to run to Duluth.

I ended up renting a 2005 Dodge Ram with a Hemi - 4 door, 4x4. It was the only thing they had available.

It's a nice truck... but I suppose any brand new truck would seem pretty nice. The Hemi has tons of power. I peeled some rubber.

On the Highway, I could get about 20 miles/gallon. It gets around 14 in the city.

So I'm looking to buy a replacement for my truck, but I think I'll go with something a little more affordable than the 2005 Ram.

I'm getting one of these

2005-09-07T12:33:00.000-05:00

This is so cool. I'm going to get one as soon as I get back to work and have some positive cash flow.

Rubik's Cube

2005-09-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

The best rubik's cube solution on the internet. This is the fastest way to solve the rubik's cube. Lars (the author) has won a few rubik's cube competitions - yeah, I guess they have (or had) these.

I need to read my own posts

2005-09-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

I've been adding blogs to this new software I have (Akregator), which is an RSS feed aggregator¹. So I added my own blog to the aggregator and was looking at the list of posts and didn't remember writing some. So I read them, and then I remembered, but I'd completely forgotten about what I had written about. So I need to go back and read some of them and check out some of the cool stuff I've written about.

Footnotes
1. If you don't know about RSS feeds, read this. If you have started a blog through blogger.com, they you almost definitely have an RSS feed from your blog and you most likely need to update. Akregator^b takes all these feeds and shows you everone's new posts in an email/news browser kind of way. Then you can read the posts in plain text and go to the actual page if you'd like. It saves a lot of time reading blogs because they're all there at once and you can see who's posted recently and stuff.

Footnote 1 Footnotes
b. Akregator is probably not the software you want unless you run linux (or some Unix) and use the KDE desktop. Because Akregator is for KDE (which I use - it's nice). But you can probably find some other aggregator that will work on your chosen platform. Mozilla Firefox has some RSS feed support, but it's not as nice as Akregator which keeps track of which ones you've read and shows them in a more comprehensive way. Firefox just has a live bookmark kind of thing that looks like a bookmark folder for each feed and seperate bookmarks for each post.

A little light reading

2005-08-11T23:04:00.000-05:00

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll is a well written and entertaining book about the true story of a network administrator who tracks a hacker after discovering an unauthorized login to his system. I had given a copy (or two) of this book to Thomas, and picked it up when I was out there so that I can give it to someone else who might like it. So I started reading it again while I was there. It's really a very good story - especially if you're a big computer geek like me.

I stopped reading a third of the way through though because I went to Borders and found The Art of Intrusion by Kevin Mitnick. This is a collection of true hacker exploits and also very entertaining. This book goes into more technical detail than The Cuckoo's Egg and raises awareness of computer security holes with strategies to defend against hackers. I finished it while I was at "The Lake" in Canada. So I started another book that I picked up at Borders when I got The Art of Intrusion.

Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by W. Richard Stevens and Stephen A. Rago is a very large computer programming text book. It is 927 pages long - I'm currently on page 219. Unfortunately, I do not have my computer with me to try out the sample programs and exercises, but I am absorbing a lot of information from this book and It'll be a big step towards really getting back into programming. I actually enjoy reading this sort of book.

Cottage and Boat

2005-08-08T16:37:00.000-05:00

I've been vacationing at Abrams' Cottages on Desert Lake since I was two years old. Back in the old days, we used to rent a cottage for a week or two (or four). The facilities are quite rustic, but it's pretty cheap. Most of the cottages (they don't know what a "cabin" is) have outhouses and only cold running water in the kitchen sink. Two of the common weekly rented cottages have flush toilets (still only cold water). One cottage is heated (still only cold water).

We no longer rent one of the common weekly rental cottages. We've been renting from the Abrams longer than anybody. So when they decided to fix up an old house on the top of the hill overlooking the lake, they offered it to my father first and he took it. That was several years ago now.

Now we have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house on the lake with hot and cold running water, a shower, and of course we don't have to use an outhouse anymore.

When I was a little kid, we had a pretty nice and fast speed boat. But it was no good for fishing on Lake Erie (only an hour or so from where I grew up in PA). So my dad had to get a bigger one that could handle the big waves. This boat is also a speed boat capable of towing a skier, but it's designed more for fishing - it has a smaller engine. But this is essentially the boat that I grew up with because I can hardly remember the previous one.

When my parents moved to Wyoming, making it no longer practical to haul the boat home every winter, my dad decided to store it up there over the winter. Then one time (I'm not sure exactly what the story is because I wasn't there), the boat sank. I guess it was tied up to the dock and filled with rainwater or got a hole or something and it sank into the lake. This pretty much ruined the boat. But they pulled it out, drained it, etc, and got it running and buoyant again.

But now it's a total piece of crap - partly because of the sinking and mostly because it's an old piece of crap. I've been saying that we should drive it out into the middle of the lake, fill it with concrete to sink it permanently, and get a new one. However, the boat's not really ours anymore because (I think after it sank) my dad gave it to the Abrams with the condition that we can use it whenever we're around. So I'll just let them worry about that old pile while I concentrate on procuring a new boat - a wakeboarding boat, a boat that no one would ever consider fishing from.

Here's my plan. I'll convince a bunch of my relatives who enjoy hanging out on the lake to go in on the purchase of a new boat. Everybody splits the monthly payments and it'll be less than $100 or maybe $50 per month each. The only problem is that most of the people who would enjoy a new boat on the lake don't have steady, well paying jobs.

Desert Lake

2005-08-08T16:34:00.000-05:00

The Lake's been awesome. I've just been doing a whole lot of nothing - and also some wakeboarding, tubing, sand castle building, reading, visiting with family and friends, etc.

I'm at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, My brother had to do some stuff, and I decided to ride along. They have a pretty nice internet access center here.

WA to CO to OH

2005-08-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

I'm in Ohio now. We left Seattle Friday night at around midnight (Pacific Time). We drove to Denver, CO to drop off a guy, then to Ohio(where I am now).

Today we are leaving OH and going to Desert Lake, On.

We drove straight through taking turns driving and sleeping while the other drives. So we got here in like 48 hours.

We ate a lot of not-so-good truck stop style food.

We brought our bikes on a roof rack and they travelled very well, but dropped our gas mileage to about 22 miles/gallon.

Seattle and riding the river

2005-07-26T21:20:00.000-05:00

I went into Seattle Sunday night with my brother and friends. It was pretty cool. We didn't do a whole lot, but we had fun.

I went up the Space Needle - it was pretty cool. Not as impressive as the CN tower in Toronto.

Then we went to a little local seafood shop and had a good time. Things got pretty crazy. I only had clam chowder and a burger - I'm not a big seafood fan.

New profile photo.

2005-07-23T22:39:00.000-05:00

I just took this picture. My hair's a mess and stuff, but I'm going to use it in my profile. I'm only creating this post to upload the picture - cause they don't seem to have any other way to do it. I'll do my logo as well so that it's hosted on blogger and not uploadyourimages which is kinda unreliable because they delete images that haven't been accessed much.

New Bike

2005-07-23T22:34:00.000-05:00

I got a bike on Thursday. It's a hybrid (part roadbike, part mountainbike). It can take a variety of tire widths for different conditions, it has a straight handlebar, and lighter roadbike components. It also has fenders - I might want to ride when it's wet out and keep the mud off my back.

Here's a pic

in Tacoma

2005-07-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

I'm in Tacoma, Wa now. Just because I don't have anything better to do. I'm staying with my brother who's been living here for a few years now - You can donate some money to his bike tour. Go to his blog - it's the thblog in my links section. He's got all the links on there to donate money.

He's been getting into fitness a lot lately and wants to run in all kinds of marathons and stuff.

So we're just hanging out with his friends and stuff - going to Seattle tomorrow and also fishing.

We went and saw "The Island" last night. It had a few technical hitches, but overall I liked it and would recommend it to someone looking for a pretty good sci-fi action.

Vacation

2005-07-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

I'm on vacation now because there isn't much work right now. I guess all the water parks want all their slides to be operational and not under construction/maintenance durring the peak summer months. It's nice for me though, 'cause I'm planning some trips to Tacoma, Pennsylvania, and Ontario..... Hmm, as if I don't travel enough when I'm working, I gotta travel when I'm on vacation as well. Ah, such is my nature.

I finished my most recent water slide on Wednesday and got to ride it a few times (to test it out and make sure all the seams are smooth and everything). It's the first time I've ridden a water slide since February or something, though I've built quite a few since then - mostly smaller ones.

Maggie, Wyoming, and Tequila

2005-05-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

I took a week off from building water slides to visit my family in Wyoming. Marie and Scott were there with their 2 year old daughter Maggie (my niece).

I flew out to Tacoma, WA and drove to WY with my brother Tom (who sometimes goes by "Bob"). The trip was rather uneventful, except that we gave a lift to some kids who ran out of gas, and then we ran out of gas the next day. Bob's car is pretty cool. It's a Subaru Impreza Outback Station Wagon - 5 spd manual, 2.5 L 4 cylinder engine, All Wheel Drive (like all Subaru cars).

Maggie was having the time of her life with all 3 of her uncles (a first for her), my parents' dog "Tequila", and the vastness of Wyoming. We went to look at some fossilized dinosaur tracks a few miles from my parents' place - it wasn't all that spectacular because they are rather small tracks and not very prominent. But I got some nice pictures of Maggie and stuff.

Now I'm at my maternal grandmother's place in MN - she just had a hip surgery. My mother and Bob are here also. It's a big mothers day/grandma's birthday get together. But I'll have to be leaving before most of the festivities to go back to work.

I'm also looking into buying a truck(1 ton Chevy crew cab) from my mom's brother Dave. She's old and worn out, but she has a few miles left in her I reckon. I know the truck pretty well as I've worked with Dave on a number of occasions and even lived with him a few times.

Home for a while.

2005-04-30T13:14:00.000-05:00

I just got back from being on the road for something like 6 weeks.

I'm going to try to get out to Wyoming next week, but I'm not positive that I'll be able to - so don't anyone get your hopes up.

Most of the hotels I've stayed at haven't had high-speed internet (because we always look for the cheapest). So I haven't posted in quite a while. It's also delayed me from setting up gentoo linux on my new Athlon64 box.

Gentoo is a pretty good distribution for people who want to customize nearly every aspect of the operating system. A good distribution for anyone wanting to learn linux may be Mandrake 10.1 Discovery. The Discovery designation means that it's for people new to linux and familiar with Windows 9x/XP.

Because I'm on the road all the time, I have a few checking accounts at a few different banks - I need to be able to make deposits and stuff wherever I am. Each bank wants $15-$20 to do a wire transfer, so in order to transfer money, I use paypal. I never cared much for paypal before because I don't use ebay or do a whole lot of online shopping (I use my check cards for that anyway). But paypal lets you add multiple bank accounts. Then you can transfer money to/from any of them. It's pretty nice, but it takes 3-4 days for each transaction.

Last post from Orlando

2005-03-12T06:03:00.000-06:00

This will most likely be my last post from Orlando, FL.

I'm leaving today and heading to Springfield, Missouri. I'll probably only be there for a short while and then on to somewhere else - I don't know where yet.

car problem

2005-03-10T20:17:00.000-06:00

My car need a bit of work.... it still drives all right, but it needs a new exhaust system, some body work, maybe some break work and other misc. repairs. It's probably going to cost a few grand for all of it.

I'm not sure if I should get it fixed, or just junk it and get a different car.

On one hand, I like my car, it gets pretty good gas mileage, and another cheap car will likely develop similar problems in the near future.

On the other hand, It'll cost a lot more to get it fixed than what I paid for the car in the first place.

I've been contemplating this for a while now, and at the moment I'm in favor of keeping the car and spending the money to get it fixed... but then I wonder about a major problem developing - like the engine blows or something.

Needing sleep

2005-02-27T20:42:00.000-06:00

I'm not getting enough sleep. I went bowling Saturday night from 10:30pm to 1:00am. They were waiting for us to finish so they could close the place.

Still working hard on the giant waterslide.

Weeked with Marie and Maggie

2005-02-22T21:09:00.000-06:00

I spent Saturday night and Sunday at Marie's playing with Maggie, hanging out, and getting some much needed sleep.

Trying to actually sleep on my days off is pretty hard with my roommates/coworkers around. They all like to stay up late and get up early and it's impossible to get any sleep.

Maggie is pretty funny and very smart. It's hard to believe that she's not quite 2 years old yet. She's almost talking in complete sentences and it's amazing how much must be going on in her little head. When I took her to the park, there was a football and a little stuffed animal that someone had left there. After riding the swing and the slide a few times, she wanted to play with the football and toy. First she took the toy to the swing, put it in (the small child's swing), and pushed it a few times. When it fell out, she picked it up and put it back in. Afterwards, she took the football for a ride down the slide. Then she danced on the picknick tables for a while. I had to stop her when she got down on her knees and started biting the table - the table is filthy. On the walk home, she got down and wanted to bite the concrete curb. She almost always insists on walking the entire 3 blocks to the park and will start to squirm if anyone tries to carry her (because she walks quite slowly).

It was a good weekend. I got caught up on my sleep and got to spend some time with Marie and Maggie which is hard to do durring the work week. I definitely needed the sleep - I was feeling absolutely drained for the past few weeks.

It's coming together

2005-02-22T21:03:00.000-06:00

Been working pretty hard this week and last. We are finally installing the slide. Up until a week ago, we were just doing pre-assembly and not putting anything in place. So now the slide's starting to take shape.

The slide we're building is a 65 foot bowl with more than 100 ft of tube into it. The bowl is what we're currently working on and we don't have any of the tube in place yet. The bowl itself is nearly completed.

nothing much

2005-02-15T21:25:00.001-06:00

Not much happening: Working, etc.

I rode a giant slingshot for my birthday lastnight, then ate fajitas at Chili's and they gave me a free desert because it was my birthday. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with a gall bladder attack - probably caused by a combination of the sour cream on the fajitas and the icecream on the desert. So I didn't get much sleep last night - I felt like I was going to die - like I do with every gall bladder attack.

Sunday night (the last night Thomas was in town) Marie had a birthday party for me at her house - it was cool with party hats and everything. Scott's mom and sister were there also. Scott's mom is pretty cool. Maggie (Marie's nearly 2 year old daughter) had a lot of fun. She's really smart and funny - and pretty advanced for her age.

So it was a pretty good birthday.

There's a cable system for wakeboarding and kneeboarding at the water park where we're building the slide. The lifeguards ride wakeboards every day after the park closes (at 5 pm). We talked to them today, and we might be able to ride it tomorrow after work. That'll be cool.

Driving, Working, Driving...

2005-02-12T07:23:00.000-06:00

Left Orlando on the 3rd to build a slide in Detroit; worked a few 12+ hour days there after driving the 19 hours straight. Stopped in Atlanta to work on another slide, what was supposed to be a quick 1 day job turned into 4 and some guys are still there working on it.

But I'm back in Orlando. It's starting to feel like home now.

wiped out

2005-02-01T18:01:00.000-06:00

I've been working so much lately that I am just totally wiped out right now. I fell asleep on the drive home (no, I wasn't driving). Actually, I fell asleep 2 minutes into the 40 minute drive and didn't wake up until we were almost home.

It doesn't help that I didn't get much sleep last weekend.

Craig's List

2005-01-31T22:12:00.000-06:00

Craig's List is pretty cool. It's like a free, nation-wide classifieds. People post all kinds of things for sale, etc. You can search by city/region.

No, seriously - Update your blog

2005-01-29T19:28:00.000-06:00

Some people haven't updated since New Years, others only a few times since. It's time to update.

boiler

2005-01-27T21:11:00.000-06:00

I don't know if this is already a product, but someone should invent an electric boiling indicator that you'd place in a pot of water and beep when the water starts to boil.