Archive

3/09/02 through 3/15/02

Attack Of DIY Woman

Help me. My wife decided she is tired of our bathroom. So, she is remodeling. Nothing too major. No replumbing or anything. Thankfully. But in the past couple of days, she has replaced our shower door with a curtain and added molding around the floor.

Hopefully this will be over soon. We only have one toilet in this house and my life has no mercy on the overflowing when she is hard at work.

Speaking of toilets, Laura made me clean ours tonight. I have to confess, as much as a neat freak as I have evolved into, I would never clean the toilet if not forced. I would probably just let it go until it's unusable and then just start using the 7-11 down the street.

Speaking of 7-11, have you noticed that some of them are pretty darn snippy about people using their toilets. "It's for employees only." You would think an organization dedicated to pushing high volumes of caffeinated beverages would have a touch more mercy. To say nothing about what the nachos do to you.

Posted by: Max - 03/15/02 - 9:00pm CST -

Cyclops Rock

My wife is currently blasting Mink Car, the lastest album from They Might Be Giants her favorite band. I was not terribly fond of them when they were almost sort of huge in the mid-eighties. I never really got into them until I saw them live. They put on one hell of a show. It is not the greatest show I have ever seen. That award goes to Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Still, they play their strange little songs with energy and ferocity. I always leave their shows feeling pumped. So, I am excited that they are coming back to STL next week. It will be a nice break from the stress of the past couple of weeks.

Posted by: Max - 03/12/02 - 10:00pm CST -

Caressing the Future.

   I was naughty - I stayed home from work today.
   Despite this, I managed to work 9 hours and get three days of work done. Yes, for my place of employment.
   This story starts about a year ago. It was suggested that getting a laptop for me would be a good idea. First, I do some training and having my materials in a handy electronic form would be great. Second, I'm a wimp - I suffer from allergies and sinus problems. Enough to keep me home from work but not exactly bed ridden - being able to work from home would have a distinct advantage. Since most of my job can be done from a PC, this became even more desirable.
   Alas, it was not to be. Apparently my job description doesn't mention "laptop" or "telecommute." This also has something to do with the fact that I'm salaried but technically hourly. Accountant double talk! There was also some mention that laptops are expensive and budgets are tightened this year. Well, the 200+ partners in the firm were each payed out $400k+ on January 1 - profit from last year. This figure was publically published in the local paper according to my source. Suddenly a $1500 Dell laptop for the guy who admins most of the voicemail system doesn't seem like a big expense - but it somehow still is.
   A few months ago my boss was in a meeting where he was told a few laptops were availible to replace some desktops. My boss has been on board with getting me a laptop all along. My boss is great. No, really! He is a super nice guy, knows his shit and takes care of his people. He plays power politics like no one else I have met. What more could I ask for in a boss? He jumped on this and pursued it - dog with a bone! Wouldn't let it go.
   This thing had to be approved all the way up the chain to the managing partner of the firm. Folks, we're talking about replacing my handbuilt PII 350 desktop with a beat up PII 400 NEC laptop. Or, at least I thought that was the deal - either way that's the way my boss played the game and he is the man.
   Last week, I finally get this thing. I got my broadband cable modem and router in October in anticipation of someday getting this device and maybe being able to work at home. They show me how to use the Virtual Private Network (VPN) software so that I can log into the network just like I'm at my desk and I'm off like a shot. I finally got it all pulled together on Friday - it finally worked and I was able to log in and do a little work from home.
   What took so long to get all of this approved wasn't the silly surplus laptop - it's the fact that once I start using it, they are going to pay for my broadband! Yup, I will just expense it to them. I'm glad I let my boss play that game. I got the laptop and the perk!
   So, anyway, the weather here has been crazy and the trees started blooming last week. Between those two facts, my head should be ready to explode. I felt just bad enough to not want to deal with ambient noise and florescent lighting on a Monday morning. I stayed home, kicked up the VPN and set that NEC to its paces. I have been working on a project that is mostly just data entry. But, with the constant interuptions at work, I would get about one office worth of info done per day. Today, I started my work day at 7:30 am, did three offices worth of data and finished up at 5 pm with an hour lunch - in all an hour's worth of overtime, and three days of work on this project. It felt so cool - there I was at my kitchen table, cats in my lap, my music playing on the stereo or Steph watching her programs or chatting at me and all the while I'm really at work, being productive. Very productive! All while my head is on and off pounding! If I didn't have training to perform tomorrow, I wouldn't go in. I love this! So free and so productive!
   This is a problem. This genie is out of the bottle. I've tasted the waters of telecommuting and they are sweet. Now all I have to do is figure out a way to tell my boss that I can best serve the team by working alone at home!

Posted by: Jericho - 03/11/02 - 9:16 pm -

WYSIWYG my ass!

   I guess I should know better by now.
   I am a visual person. I have used that excuse for everything from why tv has such a hold on me to my porn addiction. But, it's the truth. I like pretty things. My eyes like to be my judge.
   When I got into the web a few years back, I started off doing pages in plain old SimpleText, the text editor that comes with the Mac. I thought I was cool - I knew half a dozen basic HTML commands and I thought I was the poop. On advice from a friend, I downloaded BBEdit Lite. It's an HTML text editor. Frankly, it's about a quarter step above SimpleText. At one point I found myself asking why I even used it - that's how useless it was - but it was free!
   Later, I got a hold of Frontpage 98, part of Microsoft's Mac Office 98. That was pretty cool. It seemed to have a lot of things broken and a lot of things I didn't understand, but it could spell check and it was WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). It was groovy! I could do tables, something I hadn't done before because I felt they were too hard to code by hand. I could see where everything went and how it was laid out and I could zoom through making a page - and my spelling didn't make people want to hurl!
   The problem with Frontpage, and indeed most WYSIWYG editors is that they really mess with your code. They find some amazing ways to make ones code even longer and worse. Simple code often gets stretched out in odd ways. In other words - the pros wouldn't do it that way. Using Frontpage is almost like playing tee-ball. But, I couldn't help it. I moved from Frontpage 98 to Frontpage 2000 on the PC for things I did at work - even cooler, I thought. Half the stuff wasn't broken! Frontpage 2000 is really slick and I do love it, I don't care if it does mark me as an amatuer.
   When Max and I came to put this site together, I had been away from constructing web pages on the Mac for a while. I had been cuddled at work in the sweet embrace of Frontpage 2000. I started up Frontpage 98 on my Mac and instantly remembered all the crap I went through using it before. Microsoft has not released a new version of Frontpage for the Mac. Not surprizing - everyone ignores the Mac. So, I went out and downloaded Netscape and with it came Composer.
   Composer is less broken than Frontpage 98 - but man! Can it ever trash code! I have never seen worse code come out of a tool. I have had a running battle with Composer over putting spaces between links and changing apostrophes, etc. Finally, after installing the code for Link Exchange above, Composer gave up - it won't even let me edit my page within it anymore. Not that it's a great loss.
   So, here I am, up late with a sinus headache and wishing my head would explode and get it over with. I have again downloaded BBEdit Lite, vowing to myself that I will learn all of the little tools and maybe even purchase the more fully featured BBEdit. My spelling I'm sure will end up in the crapper, but my code is coming out a hell of a lot cleaner and simpler!

Posted by: Jericho - 03/11/02 - 1:05 am -

snort! That Melly!

63. I know every exit that has a McDonald's between Tulsa and St. Louis.

Posted by: Jericho - 03/11/02 - 12:25 am -

Oh, The Humanity

I am becoming increasingly cynical as I age. Or maybe I am just becoming more aware of just what a hopeless lot we humans are.

When I was in my twenties, I was quite the optimist. It seemed like such an optimistic time. The cold war was ending; peace seemed to be breaking out in Ireland and the Middle-East; freedom was breaking out in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Haiti and elsewhere; the economy was on an upward spiral and new technology was promising us an exciting new future.

Bah!

So much for that. We have found a new cold war, now with some nebulous entity we're calling "terrorism". Peace in Ireland has been teetering on collapse while it is nowhere to be found in the Middle-East. We are rushing to stamp out freedom here at home and abroad. The economy is in the shitter, despite what Herr Greenspan says.

At least our technology is cool.

Maybe cynicism is a natural part of aging. Maybe it is part of realizing that for all we like to pat ourselves on the back, humanity is not on some path upward to better and better things. It is more like we are treading water, pretending that we are some how more civilized than our cave dwelling ancestors because we have gourmet cooking.

Sometimes it is really damn hard to look at this world and have hope.

Posted by: Max - 03/10/02 - 1:00pm CST -

What are you fighting for?

   Has anyone read the news recently?
   Is it just me or does it seem that there is a lot more fighting going on than there has been in a while? Yes, I know we are involved in The War on Terrorism(TM) - but beyond that. Isreal and the Palestinians. India and Pakistan. (Wow - entities begining with "I" fighting entities begining with "P" - first time I noticed that!) China is still going after Taiwan. North and South Korea are still at it. The list goes on. All of these people fighting over little bits of land. Border clashes - old as civilisation itself.
   What is so precious that it's worth dying for? I look at the regions these people are fighting in/for and I'm apalled! There is nothing to gain by fighting over these regions! Sure, it's a little land, and maybe you'll settle an old score, but is it really worth all of this? Think of all the lives ended, the property destroyed and if that isn't enough, the money wasted while wreaking all of this havoc! What a waste!
   Now, I have a better solution. Ready? Don't fight over this little bit of land. Some of theese little wars have been going on for decades - some of the hatred goes back thousands of years. Why perpetuate it? Holy War my ass! Instead of all of this wasted time, energy, life and money, rechannel all of that into something else.
   Right now, scientists all over are working on some great stuff. We have scientists who are about to have direct visual evidence of planets in other solar systems. Mind you, these plaents will be big, Jupiter or Saturn sized. But as we know from Jupiter, they might have moons that are the size of Earth. Other scientists are working on something right out of Star Trek: warp drive ! (Check out this guy, Miguel Alcubierre , this is for real!)
   So, instead of fighting some war you can't win, save your pennies. Don't buy guns, buy rocket fuel. Invest your money in space technology. Don't waste time setting up your own space agency, talk to ESA or NASA , tell them you want to get off the planet - your whole country wants to go! Even without the exotic technologies needed for warp drive, you could build a generation ship, travel to a star with a known planet over the next few thousand years. Families are the key to generation ships. Sure, it will take a long time, but think of the benefits. Your people have been fighting and dying for millenia anyway, for no visible gain. This will get you your own planet! Why settle for a little chunk of desert next to your enemies? Holy land, you say? Whatever! I think that God created us to explore our galaxy and our universe. If we are alone in the universe, and there are all of those planets out there, then it is our manifest destiny to explore, settle and terraform them!
   Let me be your prophet - this planet is just the Garden of Eden. Go East of Eden and you will find the places God intended you to be.

Posted by: Jericho - 03/09/02 - 11:45 am -