So I’ve been a slacker and put off going to the eye doctor for too many years. An unexpected benefit is that technology, specifically the technology of making eyeglasses, has improved dramatically enough to shock even me. The new glasses are extraordinarily light weight, 0.3 ounces. The frames are hingeless memory metal. The lenses some whacky fun new polycarbonate that makes them light and thin.
Best of all, my boss says they are sexy.
When I voted for Obama at 9:30 this morning my tiny little precinct had 104 people vote as Democrats and 93 vote as Republicans (so far). What is interesting is that this is an overwhelmingly neo-conservative precinct, so there must be some cross-over voting happening.
Erci wanted a lap cat very much, and a cat that would bond with her the way Bailey has bonded with me. She found out that the local rescue team (Fancy Cat Rescue Team) was having an event at PetSmart and showing lots of kitties, so we went and checked it out. We brought home a new cat who is a medium haired mixed breed cat, mostly Ragdoll, with tortoise shell coloring and calico temperament (at least that we’ve seen so far).
The big test will be does Bailey get along with her… it can often be difficult to introduce two adult cats (the new cat is 3.5 years old, Bailey is 4). His initial reaction to seeing her in the cat carrier briefly was not encouraging, but these things take time. She is upstairs now with Sutragirl while she studies in her upstairs office. She, the new kitty, is very affectionate.
Bailey knows something is up, but appears to be at ease down here with me…
Update: I let our new kitty out to wander around free for a short bit while Bailey went outside for his morning romp. He came back in while she was still wandering and they met a few times. She seems willing to get along, but so far he is alternately afraid and hiding or hissing and growling from 3-4 feet away. I gave him lots of love and his usual treats, and eventually escorted her back upstairs to her own room, though I brushed her and petted her where Bailey could watch for a bit first. It went better than I hoped, this may work in time.
I’ve been cleaning the basement computer lab, and have some stuff to give away.
I’ll use free cycle if none of you claim items on the list below…
Three Practical Peripherals 288 V.34 Minitower II Data/Fax MODEM with power supplies.
One Supra 14,400bis SupraFAX MODEM with power supply.
One Practical Peripherals PM1200SA Mini MODEM with power supply.
One US Robotics Beta Model 1786 (1995 era) MODEM with power supply (I think this is an HST, but I am not sure).
I have serial cables of many types and if you want a serial (RS-232 or RS-422) cable to go with any MODEM above we can match them up.
I have a box full of 2, 4, 6, and even 8 conductor phone cables in a variety of lengths from 3″ to (I think) 200′ in length. All colors…. please take some phone cords off my hands…
Three SCSI connected Iomega ZIP 100 Drives, each with power supply and male to male D25 SCSI cable.
Three stereo headsets with standard walkman/mp3 player jacks… these all came with portable cassette/cd/mp3 and are not any special name brand or anything, they are all over the ear, small headsets with a top head-band.
Good Year Eagle Ultra Grip Tires
I have four essentially brand new (~1800 miles on them) Good Year Eagle Ultra Grip tires available.
These are sold as an all season radial, one of the very few that manages to earn Canada’s prestigious “Snowflake on the Mountain†rating for Winter traction. I used them as Winter tires only on my old Saab 9-5 Wagon and switched out to a quieter all-season each Spring. These things have amazing grip on snow, ice, and in slushy or wet conditions. When it is dry, they are a little noiser than most all-season radials.
They were about $800 for the set brand new, they are up for grabs if you can provide them a good home.
Size: 215/55 R16 93H – if you have that size wheels, and you get snow or ice, you’ll love these tires!
I also have one Michelin MXM 225/45 R 17 (91W) tire (essentially new) mounted on a 17″ alloy rim (5/110 lug pattern). This was intended to be a mounted full size spare for my old Saab – which I no longer have. I’d rather have the space back in my garage. Again, free to a good home.
Update: I pulled the stuff that has already been claimed out of the list. I am amazed at how fast stuff was claimed… Thank you all for grabbing stuff so quickly. There will be another round, and even some stuff that has enough value that I’ll be asking for trade and or charity donations in exchange…
The greater Washington DC Area does not have presidential primary elections until next week (February 12th), but most of the country will get to vote in their primary elections tomorrow (February 5th).
It’s time to make a statement regarding who I support in the coming elections.
On the Republican side there are no good choices. None of these men is worthy of representing you or me in National Congress, State Legislature, nor as President of the United States. Simple solution, vote in the Democratic Primary if your state allows cross-over voting (Virginia does).
On the Democratic side my favorite candidates either never ran (Clark, Gore), or have been winnowed out by the thoroughly un-democratic culling process the two parties both use (Kucinich, Richardson, Bayh, Edwards). We are left with a very important choice though, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Here is a simple formula:
Hillary is still supporting George W. Bush’s disastrous foreign adventure in Iraq.
Hillary is strongly supportive of the current political establishment, insider access, and subtle corruption.
Hillary is strongly supportive of Corporate America, to the detriment of working men and women.
Hillary will succeed in uniting Republicans and could risk a well deserved Democratic victory in November.
That’s four strikes. I really like her intellect and her policies regarding health care for all Americans, but we’ll never get to those things because of the first three strikes. Please allow her to continue serving in the United States Senate where she can actually help with the health care issue.
Obama is strongly in favor of getting out of Iraq.
Obama is also supportive of Corporate America, but less so than Hillary, and he is also supportive of individual American citizens who need an ally right now.
Obama is challenging the current establishment and brings the hope of some refreshing change.
Obama has a clear lead against all the Republican front runners, and will make it much easier for a Democratic land-slide victory in November.
Apologies for calling one candidate by first name and the other by last name, I only do that do clearly difference Mrs. Clinton from former president Mr. Clinton.
The message is clear, get your butt to the polls and vote for Obama.
So it turns out I have led a rather spoiled life, racking up system time on big-endian systems from a variety of UNIX vendors… I am baffled by some of the little oddities of x86 architecture.
I’ll buy beers for the geek that can help me get my Norhtec Microserver GP+ (SiS 55x series x86 chip set) to recognize all 512MB of memory I just bought for it and installed. For some reason both the BIOS and the OpenSuSE 10.3 operating system I am running only see 247MB of the 512MB SO-DIMM. This probably has something to do with the silly extended memory architecture, but I am baffled.
Any help?
Erci and I have some pretty amazing good fortune/karma lately. We came home from work to find all the lights on (a feature of our lights is that events can trip an ALL-ON signal to all the X-10 controllers in the house and turn on all the lights). Typically this is from the alarm being tripped, but the alarm was not tripped. Nor had we lost power (sometimes the brown-out will cause the X-10 controllers to think they got a signal).
A little annoyed we went around shutting off lights, which meant we paid a visit to the laundry room (that we ordinarily have not been to until the next round of laundry in a few days). There was a mysterious hissing noise and that turned out to be a leaking washer hose! No puddle yet, it had apparently just started leaking!
She suggested we shut off the water, finish our dinner while it was hot, then fix the plumbing. Calm Sutragirl. Great idea. After some pretty good take-out Thai food from Grand Thai and Sushi (606 and 50), we got out the necessary tools and fixed the hose connections. She rocks…
I am thinking of a month ago when I caught the 30 gallon fish tank just starting to leak, and I am very thankful both leaks were caught so soon, before any real damage happened.
I am about to find out if there is such a thing as a free thumb drive. Buy.com and Google Checkout have a deal going where you can knock $10 off the price if you sign up for Google Checkout when you buy something from Buy.com.
Last week a co-worker (you rock Ben!) found this sweet deal on 1GB thumb drives for $10.24, and he used the $10 discount to get a 24 cent thumb drive. It works great. I was too busy to join him and half the team in getting the slick little devices.
This week the price is lower… $10.00 even now, and the discount still applies.
That’s right…. you can get a 1GB micro thumb drive for free, as in beer.
Kingston 1GB DataTraveler (mini-migo edition)
I love having a house full of people. We have the La Belle Winter Gathering going on right now, and that means 12 overnight guests (including Erci and me), 3 guest dogs, and 8-10 additional daytime visitors each day. We’ve been singing, learning about the medieval church, discussing the chest building project, and catching up. I suspect that we’ll have some Western martial arts drill, some pourpoint and/or gothic fitted gown fittings, and possible a field trip to a museum.
Erci, being an introvert, is a little stressed, but she loves the food prep for so many appreciative people and showing off her aquariums. Bailey is a little freaked whenever the dogs (two rescued greyhounds and vizsla hound) come to the main level to go outside, and he only handles the small children one on one, though he does that very well. I have been loading medieval music into the server and adding it to a smart playlist.
We lost power at the house at 12:55 this morning. It came back on just as I was calling to notify NOVEC at about 4:15, but went off again at 4:20. It came back on again at 4:36 and the house is starting to warm back up now.
Brrr…..
Bring warm pajamas if you are visiting us soon, just in case… and perhaps a flash light (we have several, but you can’t have too many).
Made an interesting discovery… the gas fireplaces have electronic controls… which means no power prevents a change of state. If they are on when the power goes out we have a little heat in two locations. If they are off… no joy… Guess we need to get a backup generator.
At least the aquarium sumps are all large enough to handle the loss of power.
Weather forecast is for gradual clearing up and no more precipitation, but continued cold nights and just above freeze days.
