Older blog entries for cmacd (starting at number 57)

I want to update my Linux box before I try to copy all the data from my sick hard drive. I decided that I should get a fresh copy of SuSE 7.3 personal edition on my way home from work on Friday. The one place I expected to be able to find it was at NovoClub on Merivale Road. Detoured way out to the south end, and found out the store is now bankrupt! Not only could I not get anything newer than 7.1 there (on the closeout sale) but My favorite source of O'riley books is Kaput.

Anybody know who stocks SuSE in the west end of Otter-wa?

Tyler is mellowing out, we may be able to get him to calm down enough that he can stay.

Why Me

Our new Puppy is getting fixed this morning, we have found out that he is very agressive with other dogs, to the point where we are afraid that he will have to find a single dog home. Getting fixed early will at least remove one potential source of agression.

On the weekend some friends of ours brought over their one year old Black Lab, (80 Pounds) and Tyler (20 Pounds) wanted to start a fight with it. The folks from Border Collie Rescue have been notified, and they have him listed on petfinder. The experience is heart breaking as he is so sweet with us, and is extremly smart otherwise, but if he is wanting to pick a fight with every dog he sees, he will not be able to participate in agility.

In Other News

My Old computer, that I have been using to keep up my web sites, and so has all the unapplied updates, made a funny noise from the Hard Drive over the weekend.I shut it down, but probaly should try to move the drive to my main box, and get the info off it before it all evaporates.

In the mean time, I can't seem to get through to look at my web site this morning, so my working backup is also not accesible.

Wal-Mart is Amazing.

I took couple of rolls of film in for processing, and asked for a CD, they had two choices, I could get their "Good" one at 8 bucks, which is scaned from the prints on a Kodak machine, and comes with a bunch of WIndows software. or for 5 bucks thay could make one on their Noritsu * printer, scaning from the negatives at the same time they made prints. The Noritsu one comes with just a windows viewer aparently, so guess which one they recommeded.

Scientist that I am, I let them make me one of each, and as I suspected, the "Direct to disk" one was far superior. so I will be able to ask for the less expensive one with a clear consience from now on.- (But must budget for a film scanner)

Mind you I am not really comfortable with the fact that the new minilabs scan, and then use a laser to expose the paper, Too much chance for an upper quality limit to get in there when the printer is only rated for 320 DPI.

Anyway, After some serious Gamma Correction of the .JPGs from the CDs (particularly the Kodak CD,) I stuck up a new page showing our new Puppy

Two border collies are good for the soul.

* Noritsu also has a US site, but it wants to crash Netscape and has navigation based on FLASH.

I see where one of the Virtual Reality folks in town is going to get some actual reality "training" at the olympics

I have been sleepy this week, Our Family has increased. We have adopted a 4 month old Border Collie pup from the Lanark Animal Welfare Society. I will try to get a picture up on the web in a day or three. I expect that it won't be long before he will be taking classes at Dreamfields along with our six year old BC - Boots

davidw: dyork lives here in the Ottawa area. Out west, the Canada US border is along the 49th parallel line. here in the east, it is further south, in fact Windsor Ontario is NORTH of Detroit Michigan. I live in Stittsville, which is south of Ottawa proper, and the nearest major intersection to my house (Hazeldean and Carp Roads) is at 45.26 N

jfleck: Canada May be in North America, but it is rare that one of us Canaucks would use the term "American" to decribe his or her self. If at all, it would probably be qualifed in some way..

"The First Pretzel Eater" - Humm have to rember that one...

Marcus: gav of Transgaming has been playing and writing computer Games since he was 4 years old. (I worked for his father at one time - even at age 4 Gav prefered the Apple ][ to the Commodore PET.). I doubt that his business plan is evil, as it is taken quite liberaly from the postscript book. He has stated that he intends to fully open all the transgaming code after he gets enough subsciption revenue to cover each part of it. If he can make this plan work, I say more power to him.

In other non-news. Took the week off between Xmas and New Years, and got another wall up on my darkroom project. (of course it will not keep the dark in until it has wallboard on it. - which comes after wiring and plumbing)

I have lots of little electrical boxes to stuff with NMD-90 and products of the Leviton company. I got mildly anoyed with the ones I bought however.

It used to be that switches and outlets sold in Canada had screws with a Roberson SCRULOX head, which allows one to just put the screw on the driver, and it will stay in place while you navigate it to where you are installing it. These new switches and outlets have a combination screw head that will work with a Philips, straight or Robertson driver, but since so much of the Robertson head is cut away to allow the use of the Philips driver, it will no longer stay on the Roberson driver if you hold it horizonally. Seems that they now make them in Mexico for the entire NAFTA area, and electricans in the US are more likely to have a philips screwdriver. I find that the philips screws strip their heads after a couple of uses. - the Philips driver is almost DESIGNED to Cam-out and strip the head if you try to force it.

What does my rant today have to do with software? I guess it does point out that sometimes it is better to have several interchangable modules that can be selected rather than a gigantic interface that tries to do all things for all people.

The Ottawa Citizen had a Free S/WAN article today.

Telsa:

The answer to very high light bulbs is a gismo that goes on to a broom stick. It was a springy rubber end that grips the bulb, and you (yes even someone your size :) can reach the highest bulb. An American outfit shows one Here

Me:

I have been doing much plotting on my "Build a Darkroom" project. Having a space that is 9ft, 7 inches before I install drywall means that I can't just prop a standard Kitchen Style counter up on sawhorses, and I will have to do some real plotting in the Kitchen Department of IKEA or Home Depot before I visit Laurysen Kitchens on Carp Road.

Flash of insight

No one should be really upset about the number of Linux® companies that have indicated that they are in having to restucture. When Linux® achieves world domination, there will probaly be no need to have companies dedicated to Linux® itself. It will instead be part of the world infrastucture, and mirror sites will be run as part of other enterprises or Government projects. The Kernal hackers will still get paid, as part of their jobs building/maintaining the infrastucture that their employers use.

The trick is just to manage the transition in the meantime, so that we don't arrive at the end state before the world is really for it. You could run out of resources before everything is in place.

Time zones

got out the old FRG-7 on the weekend to update the clocks. I figure if I am going to reset them, I may as well compare them to CHU in downtown Barhaven to be sure. Of course this morning, I noticed that my watch is still on daylight time.

as goingware says here are actually 5 1/2 time zones in Canada, the provinces to the east of the USA use either use Atlantic time, or Newfoundland time. Which are one hour or one and a half-hours respectfully away from Eastern time. With the ExpressVue TV I often use this difference to watch a program on a Halifax station an hour before it turns up on my local TV station. One also has three chances to catch the show you miss localy, by watching via winipeg, calgary or vancouver.

Spyware

My wife has installed Bell expressvue as an alternative to cable tv. The set top box is supposed to be connected to the phone line so it can call home, but we were told that we did not have to do that unless we want pay-per-view.

The darn thing has reached the point where you can hear a little relay clicking about every hour trying to see if it can get a dialtone. I really wonder what it is trying to tell MaBell about us.

Neighbours

Walking the dog last night by Derik Burney's House, I see he has changed cars again. Corel probaly pays for it. I guess when you hobknob with billg you need a Cadillac.

Update: The Truck is back, I always respect an engineer who drives a truck more that one who drives a Caddy. maybe there is hope for Corel yet.

The Business of Open Source Software

I found out by accident about the BOSS conference taking place on November 25th of 2001. Looks like it might be interesting.