Edwin Wise

Woot!

I've been putting off the "woo-hoo!" journal entry all week... waiting to finish the quiz-and-project scan of the book.

It's all done EXCEPT for chapter 12, and it's all because of the transistors. I hate the little bastards, so I'm going to stress the joys of op-amps and MOSFETs in there.

Other than that, it's Friday! Woot! Dancing and parties and friends and fun!

Woot! Woot!

And this weekend will be very stormy, so no temptation to do yard work!

Woot!

Flavored Water

Mmm, HEB Chicken, warm from the heated table...

It's actually quite good. HEB, a local grocery store, has a lot of "store brand" products. In their case, they are usually as good as, if not better, than the "name brand" products.

With my chicken I was drinking a Lime Flavored Sparkling Water. Nice stuff! Light, bubbly, with a hint of lime flavor.

And then it hit me.

American "beer" (Budweiser, Coors, Sportz, whatever) is actually just Beer Flavored Sparkling Water. It all makes perfect sense now.

Transistors

I hate transistors.

Perfume

I used to laugh at people who complained about "odor sensitivity" stuff... jeez.

But now I have more sympathy. There is a lady in our office who wears a particularly noxious perfume... it's hard to be around it, burns my nose, and makes the whole breathing thing uninspiring.

It's funny, I can walk through the building and I can tell if she was at any given location in the last five or ten minutes.

Right now she is doing stuff in the storeroom behind my cell... hopefully I won't fall over from holding my breath.

People, wearing perfume causes your nose cells to curl up and die, and then you put more perfume on, which kills more cells, and so on in this tight death spiral. Take it easy on the spritzer! Just because you can't smell yourself, doesn't mean you aren't stunning your co-workers!

Date and Time

Hmmm, the clock on my journal is whacked. I just changed it to Central time, maybe that will fix it.

With any luck, it will make a six-hour difference in my times!

My Computer Misses Me

I'm sure it must! I only ever really see it on weekends and Wednesdays. The poor think, it must think I don't love it anymore...

... well, some days I guess I don't. But I haven't beat it to death with a hammer yet.

Speaking of beating things to death with a hammer, let me tell you (in general, non-incriminating terms) about some of the I have learning this huge, complicated, intricate, and mostly-undocumented software environment at work.

In particular, my most recent frustration... well, the one before my current one... complex system, and I had just the documentation from the "class" on the subject.

The class was a class, sure, and it kind of makes sense while hearing about it. But both the class and the doco for it are first-pass alpha quality stuff.

And these two large-ish documents just happened to use the SAME NOUN for two rather radically different sub-systems in the larger system. Yup, the "framitz" could mean this pair of classes, or it could mean the container class that holds them... or perhaps even, in some cases, the larger environment it was all embedded in.

Yup, clarity personified.

I had a nice, pleasant chat (really, I was quite nice and so was he; he didn't realize the pain he was causing) and cleared most of that up.

Argh.

Hey, I got a long e-mail from my son a few days ago! Neat! We are talking! Well, will be once I write back. I was going to do that today at work, but it's been nuts! I left for work at 7:15, I just got back a few minutes ago at 10:20pm or so.

Work, lunch with another Edwin from the videodisgo project I consulted on, more work, to an anthropology test (the last one, thank God), to dinner with our landlord to talk about buying the house, to dance lesson, and now here.

Whew.

Why do I do this to myself?

Oh yeah, 'cause it's fun.

Or something.

Anyway, now that I've patted my computer for a few minutes, it's time for a nice glass of port and my nice soft pillow.

Sleep well, y'all.

Be careful what you wish for

So on my last entry I talked about getting sick just to get a break...

Yesterday I woke up with a headache that gradually progressed to the migraine stage. I managed to stagger home and lay down for a couple of hours, until I could feel well enough to take some pain pills and then stagger back to work. It all went away a few hours later...

... but no real break and I got to feel icky to boot!

So I'm settling in here at National, learning my way around a bit, beginning to make an impact. And this guy I know, who is starting a company, which could make bazillions of dollars (and I think it really could!), who got funded just now... he wants me in as a founding member! He says "tell me what you need to come over". It's everything short of "I'm for father, Luke".

And yet I promised, at my hiring, I would stay for a couple of years. Whit got me in, I have to keep my word. But the glare of all that possible cash sure is alluring.

Brains...

Ugh, I think my mind is finally beginning to unravel. I spend too much time tired, too much time frustrated, and too much time busy.

I really need a break, but that won't be forthcoming until July or so. Assuming I can turn my directorship at trails into a "break" of some kind. At least the darned book will be done!

And on that note, have I mentioned lately that I hate transistors? I think I finally have a grasp on how they work, in great detail, though I'm not happy with the explanations of the base-to-collector jump I've been reading. They seem to devolve down to a "just because" form, as opposed to the nice details they give on the emitter-to-base system.

Bastards.

FET and MOSFET are so much nicer.

And I'm still a week behind.

Maybe it's time to get sick and be forced to take a couple of days off...(knock on wood)...

Bleh.

Not that I have strong feelings about the subject, mind you.

Blog Spam

What type of inflamed, disease ridden asshole thinks its a "good thing" to post penis enlarging spam as a comment to my private blog!?

These spam people can suck shit from my dripping ass, choke on it, aspirate the vomit, and DIE. Fuck them. There is a new layer of hell for spammers, and I for one will dance on their graves laughing.

Pain and Suffering

Okay, not bodily pain -- Marla gets that these days, with her recent surgery to remove a cyst from her wrist. I won't even begin to mention the bad puns that Richard floated around this...

Last week ended in frustration and annoyance. Documentation and design information. Good things. Cleverness, bad. Remember these two points, programmers, and I won't have to drive up to your house at 3:00am and break your kneecaps with my orange dead-blow hammer.

We had our second permanent halloween committee (PHC) meeting on Saturday. Though scheduled for an hour, everyone was so fired up we ran for two hours. Then an order out for pizza and wrapping up with a viewing of Jacob's Ladder. Great movie. Many of the same themes that were used in the Sixth Sense, though differently presented (and from ten years earlier).

The plot and planning TWiki is up, too, at least mirrored on my server for now. And we have a good half of the managers locked down, or at least identified! Good times. If we get half of the effect I'm hoping for, this will be a good trail.

I only have two more Anthropology tests, one of which is today. Then I'll have a few weeks to study for my Tai Chi advancement, which may come in the next five week, or nine. I don't know yet.

My denial can no longer stand on the book -- I'm a week behind, and there's nothing to be done about it. Chapter 12 has me learning the inner details of transistors (I hate transistors) and working up a "clear" explanation of them. THAT is taking a long time. And then I need to talk up integrated circuits.

I just hope I stay only a week behind.

Maybe the control chapters will go faster.

Oooh, I have a new book project that I'm doing off contract, with my Dad. Its my birthday soon, so go to my Amazon.com wishlist and buy me books... it will speed my progress. I think I only have two project books on the list right now, but that is bound to grow eventually.

One of these days

One of these days, I'm liable to beat my computer to death with a hammer, I swear. It's bad for my blood pressure, that's what it is.

Of course, it's usually my own damn fault -- I have an itchy clicking finger and have a tendency to stop things halfway.

For example, Monday evening I was preparing some tax software rebates and I needed to copy my receipt. So, since this computer is pretty fresh from its Windows install still, I had to install the Compaq scanner drivers and junk.

I start this up, no problem. Then I see an install box that says its copying some Adobe stuff across. Thinking, "hey! Don't mess with my Acrobat!" I click Cancel.

It cancels.

On reboot, it turns out it didn't back out of the cancel gracefully. In fact, it messed up my NT Kernel! Bastards.

So I figure, "hey! I've got an emergency repair disk from my last install!" so I boot to that. Nope. So I boot to the Windows install CD and tell it to use the disk. Completely useless, doesn't recognize it. Bastards. I think it's more a placebo than a "repair" anything.

So I do a more extended recovery. No problem, everything is still there, except for Adobe mind you, and works. Mostly.

Except I can't get to the internet for mail or web browsing.

I check all my network settings and they are good.

I can ping anything, and DNS works.

But FTP, Web, mail (both directions) don't work.

And then I run out of time.

Finally, yesterday, looking at it again, I discover that my Zone Alarm is blocking some non-application processes out of bizarre ports. What is this?

I fiddle with the settings a bit and voila! It all works again!

However, I remain very suspicous of things. Do I have a virus? An evil entity posessing my computer? Why would Zone Alarm list activity to the 'net, VITAL activity it seems, but with no associated program?

I may eventually upgrade to XP because it seems to make at least a TOKEN effort at protecting its system files. Windows 2000 lets anyone and their dog piss all over vital kernel files, and that's a huge pain when I have old, ill-behaved installations to do.

Of course, I could install at NOT administrator, but then, the installs don't work. At least my kernel would be safe.

Computers. Bah.

Not ahead, Not behind

Well, I finished up Chapter 11 on Saturday, but it's a weak chapter. I may need to go back and beef it up a bit... in my copious free time.

Hah! Right. Let me stop chuckling over that little joke before I go on.

Okay.

What I've been doing mostly these days is dragging my sorry self around in a half-asleep daze. I've been tired a lot lately and it's made it hard to stay focused. Spring isn't helping -- the beautiful weather, mixed in with thunderous storms, isn't helping me concentrate.

All in all, I don't seem to be any more ahead or behind on most of my projects right now. Except W.Eng. Apparently we stopped putting the project and workspace files on the CVS. I remember that now, they were messing us up because Pat and I had different environment layouts, mostly just around the placement of our parser libraries. Anyway, it can take ages to rework all of those dependencies and junk so I didn't get anywhere. I finally remembered to e-mail Pat to get them on Sunday night.

Of course, it wasn't all procrastination this weekend. I finished the last four Anthropology labs (finally) though I didn't have time to study for the next test. Fortunately, this isn't a test week, so that's not a bad thing. And like I said above, I finished and sent out Chapter 11.

What I didn't do was start Chapter 12 which is about, I dunno, electric switches like transistors and stuff, and integrated circuits or something. I find out when I start.

I was beginning to worry about the content of this book. After all, it's about robotics but all of my time has been spent on mechanics and electronics. Did I forget to schedule any robot control chapters? That would be lame.

But no, looking ahead in the outline, it seems the last third of the book is about control, which is where the real glory of robotics lies.

I don't know of those chapters will be easier or harder, though. I just hope I can make them interesting and on time.

Now if I can just stay awake long enough to do something useful at work today. It's Monday, so that could get interesting. Though I have a cup of nasty office coffee to help me out.

Title? We don't need to stinkin' title!

I guess I just have to accept the fact that I'm a week behind in the book again. Damn! This is going to be hard to finish in time.

About the Orkut thing? It turns out you need to be invited to get in! Neat! Or something.

Yay Me!

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Still not right

With Marla's RAM in my computer it works better, but it's still not right. Crashes about once a day when I'm using it.

I guess it's time to do those other tests -- I think I'm down to reloading the BIOS, but that's scary.

I wonder if I can lower the clock speed in the BIOS? Kind of a reverse overclocking. Underclocking! This is under the assumption that my motherboard or something on it is not right, and the extra load on it is making the signals icky. Or something. You know, technical stuff.

My Anthropology test on Monday went well, and there are only two more to go! Yay me! Though there are still four labs to do, and those take about an hour each. Hmmm, and there is this Danish TV series that I need to watch, about four hours worth... supposed to be really good.

Oh yeah, and the book. I'm about a weekend behind still, so I hope for some brainstorms this afternoon to catch up. Wish me luck!

Finally, if you read this you need to go to Orkut.com and sign up as my friend. Make me popular! (I'm assuming that there are SOME people somewhere that read this) Anyway, Orkut is a really nice people-networking system; seems to be better than the other ones I've seen. It's also targetted for professional networking, but I'm not in that market right now so I haven't really looked at that aspect.

I'm Behind Again!

Worked my poor little ass off on Saturday... but I was just pushing uphill and against the wind. I finally had to slack off and just get some _rest_.

I finished the HUGE Chapter 10, Capacitors, by about 10:00pm that night. Needless to say I didn't start Chapter 11, Inductors, that night.

Sunday morning was spent in an orgy of financial responsibility. Paying bills, working out the budgets, finishing the taxes. The good news is that I have to pay LESS tax than I throught. The better news is that it is all sent in and _paid for_ now.

Sunday afternoon was working on Anthropology labs. I find that it's getting harder and harder to care about class... I think I'm just running down like a poor little windup toy with a stretched spring.

In the afternoon I hooked up with Matt and Susan P. and we started a nice batch of beer brewing. Mmmmm, fresh beer. In response to this, I've added a TWiki web Zymurgy to my site. The link will appear on the front page... eventually.

I never did get a good lock-down on my computer's problem. But I did swap out a 128M memory card with Marla's 512M card (leaving her machine a little short; time to zip by Fry's!). I thought that fixed it, but then the machine crashed Saturday night just to prove me wrong.

Either way, time to try to get the W.Eng. environment back up to speed... though at _this_ pokey rate, Pat will probably figure it out by himself before I get it all up again!

In closing, I would like to say that I sneezed this morning and hurt my neck. It still hurts. Feel sympathy for me.

Vision

Oh yeah, yesterday I got glasses. They are bugging the hell out of me. But I see better. Except for my peripheral vision.

I'll post pictures someday.

Bad Memories

I ran a new memory test, TuffTest, on the memory. It seemed to hang on the last 64Meg... which isn't good. Even disabled my KVM. Hung twice, which is twice as bad.

So I stuck in a different stick of RAM. That didn't test out all that well, either. But heck, I'm running with it now.

No crashes yet! But time will tell.

I'm not surprised, though, that the stick that seemed bad was bad -- it's HP memory, from a damned cheap machine. Who knows what lowest-cost vendor supplied those 128M?

I've had the hardest time getting into the writing today... and there are still several pages to do before I move on to Inductors. Argh! Spring makes it SO HARD TO CONCENTRATE!

I'm such a masochist.

Memories?

Well, I didn't do much of anything at home yesterday because of Tai Chi; it eats my Thursdays from 6:00 when I leave to 9:00 when I get home. But it's a great workout. Yes, it's hard work -- much more effort that it appears to be from the outside. Who knew?

Last night I reversed my two memory sticks and ran the RAM test again.. no problems. I don't think its the memory. Damn.

I've had some three or four different blue-screen errors (Colonel Ackbar, "It's a Trap!"). The ever-popular IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL comes up regularly. The most recent one was UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP, which doesn't sound good.

The corresponding code to the kernel trap indicates that it is a "Double fault trap" which is, apparently, a blown stack. Ouch! Some piece of software is out of control... assuming I'm reading things right.

Suck. One suggestion is my BIOS may need updating, so I'll try that. I probably have an errant driver, so I may try to updgrade all of those too... but first, I want to poke around the dump log and see if I can learn anything.