On being me

English is English. No IMglish, please.

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 06:18:19 GMT

I found this userpic on LiveJournal some time ago, and it immediately struck a chord.

Go. Click. I'll wait.

...

Back so soon? Oh, well. I guess I can't force you. There are seventeen useful mnemonic devices for remembering (and thereby avoiding) common mistakes in the English language. For the benefit of — well, everyone, basically, since it took me three or four times through to read all of them, and quite a few more before I gave up and used GIMP to copy each saying out at my own pace — I've copied them out here. Some are humorous, some are pet peeves of mine, some are both, and a couple are neither.

"Your stupid"? My stupid what?
Your throws of ecstasy send me into throes of amusement.
Never enter your PIN number on an ATM machine. You could get the HIV virus.
You can defuse a bomb. But diffusing it might be a bad idea.
If you really did have baited breath, you would smell rather fishy.
I before E except after C or when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh. Unless it's weird.
Your is not mine. You're means you are.
Thru is only a word if you're referring to getting a hamburger in your car.
Rouge is a color. A rogue isn't.
Per se means of itself. Per say is only how you pronounce it.
A horde is a large group, often unruly. To hoard is to gather, and often references dragons.
Fire is fiery. Burn all misspellings.
Et cetera does not abbreviate to ect., ecc., or et. etc.
e.g. means for example, and i.e. means that is. i.e., always be correct.
You should definitely spell definitely definitely.
If you had a D, you wouldn't deserve congratulations.
A lot is two words. Allot means to distribute.

When you've memorized all these, Paul Brians has an absurdly long list of other common errors. He also has lists of common non-errors, commonly misspelled words, and other interesting things.

The plumber, in the laundry room, with the pipe wrench

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:09:44 GMT

I'm doing some home improvement work in my laundry room. This required removing both my washing machine and drier. I just put them back and started a load of laundry.

Now, the rest of this may not make sense to some of you until I explain that you do things differently on your side of the pond. I realize that your washing machine only has one water input, and an internal heater that heats the water to the correct temperature, but that's not the way we do things here. On this side of the pond, washing machines have two water inputs. A red one for hot water and a blue one for cold.
Also, laundry rooms have two water faucets. A red one that supplies hot water and a blue one that supplies cold water. (If anything in that last sentence surprised you, please don't tell me. I do NOT want to know. My brane hurts enough already.)

There are also two water supply hoses. Although often identical, my set has a visual (but not functional) difference: one has blue bands on the ends and the other has red bands on the ends.

OK, so now you know what is supposed to happen.

In my innocence and naïveté[0] I figured that I should connect the blue hose from the blue faucet to the blue input and the red hose from the red faucet to the red input. Yes, I know that it would have worked just as well to connect the red hose from the blue faucet to the blue input and the blue hose from the red faucet to the red input, but I have spent enough time tracing wires and/or cables in sound and electrical systems to know not to mess with useful color indicators when present.

I turned on the washer, and immediately noticed a problem.

(STOP. NOW. Ten points if you can spot the problem.)

SPOILER SPACE

SPOILER SPACE

SPOILER SPACE

SPOILER SPACE

The washer did not fill. After a brief contemplation of why my pipes might have frozen again, I realized that it helps to turn on the faucets. I did so.[5] The washer filled up with warm water (as requested) and started washing my clothes. I took this to be a sign that I'd done everything correctly, and left the washer alone until it finished.

Then I took my clothes out to move them to the dryer. They were unexpectedly warm. My washer does one type of rinse. Cold. Cold water does not normally make clothes warm.[1] In an attempt to determine the cause of this weird behaviour, I started another load. A cold load. The washer did not fill with cold water. In fact, it started filling with something that bore a remarkable resemblance to hot water.

Apparently, some idiot thot[3] it was a plumber and decided[4] to arrange my laundry room so that the blue faucet supplied hot water and the red faucet supplied cold water.

*sigh* Add something new to my list of things to fix. Does the stupid list ever get shorter?

[0] Redundant and repetitive[0][6], I know. Go away.

[1] Not unless said clothes contain decent concentrations of metallic sodium, metallic potassium, or similar.
A) This is completely off topic for this particular rant,
2) I was pretty sure I had not treated my clothes with either[2], and
III) There was no characteristic fire resulting from the reactions between the aforementioned metals and water.

[2] Anything stronger is practically impossible to get anyway, and even if it could be acquired, can be pretty much trusted to ignite spontaneously when exposed to air. Since my clothes were not on fire when I put them into the washer, I didn't bother to consider this option.

[3] I heartily endorse the definition that a "thot" is what bounces around in an idiot's head and masquerades as a "thought". (I do not deny that I have these on occasion.)

[4] To whatever extent "decided" and "decision" can be applied to what ever thot[3] process (or lack thereof) was (or was not) used to make said "decision".[4][6]

[5] So yes. I left out the step of connecting the drain hose to the drain pipe, and the step of connecting the mains plug to mains power. While the latter would also have caused the failure-to-fill symptom, the former would merely have caused Interesting Times (sorry, pterry) when draining. In either case, these tasks were both performed properly, so my failure to mention them serves no purpose other than to leave red herrings on the hunt for the real problem.

[6] Yes. Dale is in a self-referential mood today. Take it up with /dev/null.

On installing XP

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:46:54 GMT

I've got this 5-year-old hunk-a-junk piece of hardware that I finally got around fixing up into a vaguely useful computer. Mostly, by purchasing more memory and a larger disk drive for my real computer, and moving the old hardware to the old computer, which had neither.

Then, because I'm donating it to a place that "needs" Windows, I went to install Windows XP on the thing. This is where the story gets a little interesting.

I figured I'd install XP, the wireless drivers, then Firefox and AVG Free while running Windows Update. The first two went as planned. Mostly. However, the XP CD had apparently only one video driver. 640x480x16. That's 16 colors, not 16 bits. It also had no drivers for the built-in ethernet port, and had difficulty realizing that the drivers for the wireless card actually went with the wireless card that had just been installed. So, I had:
A 640x480x16 display
No ethernet port
No wireless card
I did not check for the presence or absence of a modem. (But driver updates downloaded from Windows Update lead me to believe that it was not present either.)

Once I convinced Windows to actually use the wireless drivers I had installed, I decided that Windows Update was a slightly higher priority operation than I had thought. 83 (yes eight-three) high-priority updates, one hardware update for the video card, about two hours, and no reboot, later, I now have a sensible 1280x1024x32-bit display, and am happily installing Firefox and AVG. I still have no ethernet or audio though. I will, surprise, surprise, need a reboot to activate at least one of those high-priority updates.

Post-reboot, I still seem to have no audio or ethernet drivers. This is a bit of an issue, especially the no-audio part.

On Saki IM

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:01:05 GMT

I recently, for not particularly good reasons, decided to install the Facebook IM app, which is powered by Saki. Not too long after that, I discovered that (1) There was apparently no Ga^H^HPidgin[0] plugin for Saki, and (2) there is a standalone IM app.

Since I'm pretty strict about not using Firefox as an IM client[1], I grudgingly[2] downloaded and installed the IM app. This went fine, although I had to click several times on "Thanks, but I've already registered", both before downloading and after completing the install.
Yeah. About that. The "completing the install" bit. It asked for my login, which I provided, and then it asked (I'm paraphrasing here) "Do you want to install the Saki IM client for your PC?"

Do I want to *what*? Didn't I just do that? OK, fine. Go ahead. At which point it downloads[3] and runs yet another .msi file. The install completes. Maybe. Now it wants permission to download and install Adobe Flash Player. ... Um ... Noooo. It's already installed, thank you. Which it evidently was, since nothing broke when I clicked no. Then it asks for the login info. Again. Which I provide. Again. Now it starts asking me more questions: "Do you want to install and run 'owl'?" "Do you want to install and run 'friends'?"[4] "Do you want to install and run 'weather'?" "Do you want...?" Every time I click on anything at all, I have to specify whether I want to install and run it, or just run it. And, of course, after I select one of those, I have to compile whatever it is I just downloaded before I can use it.

You might say I am somewhat less than impressed. You might also say that Antarctica has been known to be slightly chilly in winter.

[0] One of these days I'll remember what that program is called. But for something like three years, I think, I knew it as Gaim.
[1] "For the right job, use the right tool."[5]
[2] The right tool for IM is Pidgin.
[3] Using IE, of course, because everyone always uses IE! I don't[1], just in case that wasn't obvious, and forcing it down my throat is an excellent way to make me ... unhappy. To put it mildly. I'm not quite sure why IE is still allowed to speak to the Internet, period.
[4] This is an IM client, mind you. An IM client where you can only talk to your friends.
[5] Of course, if it's not the right job, you can use anything you want. No one ever mentions that little detail, though.

gibber

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 05:12:26 GMT

I've been trying to catch up in ASR[0] recently, and some bright spark links to these wonderful pictures. Not that I think Zimmlock[1] particularly needs any more ideas, but they just look like something he'd draw, just for the fun of it.

[0] 300+ day retentions are either wonderful or the bane of my existence. I haven't decided which.
[1] Non-TT-F folks: A very talented artist who usually draws buildings.

On visiting Europe

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:33:17 GMT

(Portions of this only apply to those of you who are (un)fortunate (take your pick) enough to live in the USA.)

Item the first: Tell the nice people at the US Department of State that you are leaving at least a month before you actually are.

Our story starts in West Lafayette, about 21 hours before I'm supposed to be on a plane flying east to meet my family. Except, of course, that I don't have a passport. Having caught on at about that time that it is apparently useful to call and ask "Why don't I have my passport yet?" I do so, and am informed "Because we haven't processed your application yet." Or some similarly brilliant excuse. Yes, I know you're swamped. But you've had a good ten weeks.

Item the second: It's often a good idea to get your flight rescheduled in person. Social engineering and all.

My grandmother were going to be on the same flight. So I take her to the airport, and get my flight rescheduled while I'm there. The nice man behind the counter waived the schedule change fee, which more than makes up for the gas it took to get me down there and back.

Item the third: If you failed at item the first, expect to spend a full day at your nearest passport processing center. In my case, that was Chicago, a ~2 hour drive away.

The nice people on the telephone finally said "Yeah, I think you'd better go to Chicago to get your passport in person. Here's an appointment for 9 AM." My thoughts went something like "OK. That means leave at 7. Allow an hour for getting photos, getting lost, traffic, &c., so leave at 6. Oh. Wait! Chicago. That means I lose an hour. Leave a 5." (Some of you are laughing. Shut up. I was sleepy.) The drive was uneventful, except for getting caught in some slow-moving traffic, caused by construction (at which point I realized I had *gained* an hour, not lost one, and immediately ceased any sort of worrying) and that I missed one of my last turns, and ended up about eight blocks north of the passport center. I figured that was close enough for downtown Chicago, and parked. I then spend a full hour wandering around because I couldn't keep track of which way I needed to go. (Again. Shut up. Three hours of sleep does not promote intelligent choices. Such as leaving the maps in the car.) I arrived at the passport center right on time, having spent five hours on a trip that was supposed to take three.
As I said, full day:
1) Learn that appointments don't matter.
2) Stand in line.
3) Put your name, rank, and serial number on a piece of paper.
4) Wait until they call your name. (sitting permitted)
5) Go upstairs.
6) Sit or stand in line until there's enough space in the other line.
7) Stand in the other line.
8) Get a ticket.
9) Wait until your number is called. (sitting permitted)
10) Submit your citizenship, identity, and travel documentation; passport application; &c., receive receipt.
11) Wait until at least 3 PM (sitting permitted, leaving the building permitted)
12) Submit receipt.
13) Wait until they call your name. (sitting permitted)
14) Receive passport.

I think I got everything in there. Maybe. Actually no. I skipped over a trip back to the car to dump my pocket-knives when I discovered that they'd be a problem.

In any case, nothing particularly eventful happened for the next 60-ish hours: Go home. Stop in random Shell parking lot to sleep. Finish going home. Finish packing. Sleep. Get up. Go to airport. Fly to Newark. Fly to Edinburgh. Take bus to downtown Edinburgh. Walk around in Edinburgh. Take bus back to airport. Fly to London.
Charge madly through the London airport to get to the Paris flight on time. Wait an hour. Board plane. Wait another four hours. Fly to Paris. Discover luggage somehow failed to make the connection, but would be arriving on the next plane. At this point, I had been traveling for about 36 hours straight.

Item the fourth: Determine the train schedule *before* deciding how long you're willing to wait for your lost luggage.

We decided to wait for the luggage. (Obviously, this is not The Luggage. Unfortunately.) This was a bad idea, because it meant we got to the train station promptly at midnight, three minutes after the last train left, and had to wait 5 AM for the next one. Then we spent until almost 2 discussing what to do, at which point we finally decided that with just over three hours to wait, the best thing to do would be to pull an all-nighter.

Once we got to Saint Rémy, we ate breakfast and took a nice nap. Around noon we ate lunch, showered, and then wandered around Saint Rémy. Over dinner, we visited with some old family friends. Most of them spoke English, which is a good thing, since our French ranges from minimal to nonexistent.

The next day (Sunday) we did some more visiting, spent the late morning and afternoon in Paris, and then played a little 2-on-2 Hot Box after dinner.

Monday, we headed back to Paris, to fly to Amsterdam, and then take the train to Utrecht.

Item the fifth: When in the Netherlands, don't plan on renting bikes on Pentecost Monday. There won't be any available.

We were not privy to that particular clue, and were planning to bike from the station to the house where we were staying. This did not work. Attempting to get six people home on two bikes, even in the Netherlands is difficult. (It's not uncommon to see someone sitting on the rear luggage rack of a bike, and they all have luggage racks.) In the end, two of us rode, and the remainder took a taxi. The luggage went with the other two in the first taxi.

We did get bikes on Tuesday, and spent the late morning and afternoon biking.

Wednesday, after lunch, back to the train station via taxi and bike, then via train to Amsterdam, and plane to Oslo. We wandered around in downtown Oslo for a while the next day, and then returned to the airport for our next flight, to Stavanger, and from there via boat to Karmøy. More visiting with family, and on Friday we hiked up one of the fjords. We got to see a glacier, but our sense of adventure had been misplaced, so we didn't wander around on the glacier.

Norway has a lot of impressive waterfalls in those fjords.

Saturday we spent retracing our steps to Stavanger, and then taking the train to Eigersund.

Item the sixth: When visiting someone you've never met before, make sure you have a phone number for them, and they have a phone number for you, and everyone knows the plans.

As you have probably gathered, we failed at this maneouver too. We were supposed to spend Sunday with my mother's second cousin, or some similarly close relative, who we had never seen before. This somehow completely failed to happen. Around 4 PM, however, we found her (the relative) aunt and uncle, and her (the relative, again) parents showed up not too long after that. We spent the rest of the evening with them, but went to bed early, so we could be up by 5, to catch the train to Stavanger, and then planes to Oslo, Newark, and Washington-Dulles.

In total, I count seven forms of transportation, counting the four different airlines as one, four sets of relatives and one set of friends to meet, and four countries, not counting the US.

For a trip that complex, I really don't think we got off too badly.

On spinning one's wheels

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 01:47:23 GMT

Or, as some more concisely refer to it, "biking".

(Yes, there's a reason some of you are having déjà-vu.)

Winter has broken, finally. I'm not sure if spring has sprung; there are still patches of snow, but it's 55°F (13°C) out. I'd forgotten how much pure, unadulterated *JOY* there was in biking without having to be bundled up like the Michelin man. Never mind that I've probably already spent an hour on my bike today; I don't have to be in bed until 22:20 at the earliest[0], so I think I'll be getting a little bit more exercise tonight. Just as soon as I re-attach my water bottle holders.
Besides, exercise makes shifting my bedtime earlier by almost three hours much less of a challenge.

[0] 05:20 is not my idea of a decent time to be leaving for anywhere[1]. It's not a decent time to be doing anything except sleeping, in fact, but I don't get much choice in the matter. Not when coordinating spring break schedules with about fifty people.
[1] Louisiana. I'll be back in just over a week.

On alcohol

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:41:28 GMT

Yesterday, a few of us were hanging out, and I managed to display my copious (read: "non-existent") knowledge of alcoholic beverages. In an attempt to educate me, one of the other fellows there informs me "Let me know when you turn 21, and I'll take you out and get you a shot of Everclear."
This is not a surprising sentence to hear around here (What can I say? It's a college campus.), except for one minor detail. It's not usually said to people who turned turned 21 just over fifteen months ago.

On sprains

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 05:06:25 GMT

How many times have I been told that I'm going to hurt myself the way I play Ultimate Frisbee?
Personally, I haven't the slightest, but after something in the vicinity of two and a half years, I have finally succeeded. On Sunday, I landed hard, and wrong, on my left hand, and sprained both my thumb knuckles.

Not that I let that stop me from playing today; before playing, I finally went out, got a splint (finding one long enough to protect my entire thumb was interesting), and first-aid tape to apply the splint. When I'm wearing my biking gloves (which I do when playing Ultimate), the splint does its job quite well (tape to immobilize the top knuckle, and the glove holds the splint in place to immobilize the other two joints), but I'm still trying to figure out if it's possible to immobilize both knuckles with just tape; the proximal phalanx is entirely too well surrounded by flesh (mostly muscle) to get a good tape job. Fortunately, I don't need to immobilize the joint at the base of the thumb (right next to the wrist) too, or there'd be no solution other than the gloves; tape around the palm is a non-option, due to the shape of the splint. And the fact that it's notoriously impossible to apply tape to a palm.

On my craziest moment this summer.

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:29:37 GMT

Yesterday, I was in a group that was sharing our craziest moments this summer. Not to imply that my summer was anything that vaguely resembles sane, but that was a pretty easy one for me.

The moment in question is closely related to that image over -------> there. For part of the summer, we drove the van on the right. Then, in Savannah, Georgia, we saw the van on the left, and noticed it was for sale. Now, there are three of us, of which exactly one drives a stick-shift, and the new-to-us one was ... you guessed it. A stick-shift. Does that stop my cousin from purchasing it? No. Of course not. Does this mean that either of the other two learn how to drive a stick-shift. No. Of course not.
All this means is that Dale gets to drive a 1993 Volkswagen van (overweight and underpowered, here we come) from Savannah to West Lafayette, by way of Elkton, Maryland, which is, if anything, further from West Lafayette than Savannah is.

On Helpfulness

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 04:49:16 GMT

This is somewhat old news now, but it appears I got elected the most helpful member of the TT-forums.

It also appears that I'm tied for third place in the "Least Helpful" category. Since I'm quite sure that there are more than four members on the TT-Forums, I suspect that something somewhere might be slightly broken.

On Laptops Again

Wed, 31 May 2006 03:08:19 GMT

In all fairness, I should admit that 1) I like the two-dimensional scrolling that is possible on a Apple lappy's touchpad, and 2) Macintosh interfaces are designed not to require right-clicking, but I still claim that PS/2 is an important port.
Or maybe I should say that:
My PS/2 KVM, my other PS/2 KVM[0], my PS/2 keyboard, my PS/2 mouse, my DOS install disks, my Win 3.11 install disks, and the friend across the hall a few years ago who had to borrow my PS/2 keyboard because Windows XP would freeze before it got into a state where it would recognize his USB keyboard,
all say that PS/2 is an important port.

I also insist that a proper num-pad is a must-have, and the only laptop I've ever seen with a proper num-pad is one with a seventeen-inch screen. (Yes, that's "seventeen". I spelled it out for a reason. It's a 16:9 widescreen.)

[0] One is a two-port KVM, the other is a four-port KVM, purchased not long after I acquired computer #3.

On Macintosh laptops

Sun, 28 May 2006 05:57:21 GMT

I officially hate them.

1) I hate laptops, due to the lack of a full-size, standard configuration 104-key keyboard, and due to the presence of an [Fn] key with no standard location or behaviour.
2) I hate laptops, due to these <sarcasm>wonderful inventions</sarcasm> known as touchpads. Especially when they're not configured for tap-clicking.
3) I hate laptops, due to the lack of PS/2 ports into which I can plug my perfectly good PS/2 mouse and keyboard. (Four USB ports, a firewire port, a modem port, an ethernet port, an S-video port, and a 15-pin SVGA port[0]? Sure. Why not? But even one PS/2 port? Horrors, no! Who could ever *possibly* want that!?)
4) I hate Macintoshes, due to the fact that [Ctrl] doesn't do what I expect it to do, and there is (AFAICT) no way to correct this.
5) I hate Macintoshes, due to the requirement that I use two hands to right-click. (Oh, sure. Let's connect my perfectly good wheel-mouse. Oops. Never mind. There's no way for me to connect this PS/2 plug. (See #3))

There I was, attempting to type a coherent blog post on a Powerbook. And I want to press <Shift-Home>. But no. There's no [Home] key. [Home] is <Cmd-LeftArrow>. So I type <Beanie-Shift-LeftArrow>, and all is fine and good. Until I want to press <Ctrl-Shift-LeftArrow>. Guess where the [Ctrl] key isn't. And guess what's there instead. If you guessed "the lower left corner of the keyboard" and "the much-loathed [Fn] key", you'd be correct. Now guess what <Fn-LeftArrow> does. This time, try "go to the beginning of the document". Note, that is not "the beginning of the text box". If I'd meant that, I would have said that. This is "the beginning of the document. Ignore the fact that I was typing in a text box that is now hiding off-screen."

OK, I think I'm done fuming, at least for a little while.

[0] I'm sure there are other ports there too; I think there's a parallel port, for example. (OK, so this isn't the Powerbook. But seriously. *FOUR* USB ports on a laptop?)

On "it"

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:40:57 GMT

A little over a month ago I blogged about being drafted into tech-support making "it" work.

"It" now has a name: "Scan The Van", and a website.

Several hours of today were spent working on turning said van into something more closely resembling a mobile scanning operation. Westfalias are excellent vehicles for this procedure, since they have *two* 12V batteries[0], a built-in fridge, and a camper mode that sleeps three to five, depending on how friendly you feel like being.

There are still some issues, though. Our record for today is:

Problem: The auxiliary battery is a crank battery.[1]
Resolution: Replaced old auxiliary battery with a 100 Ah deep-cycle battery.

Problem: There were no 120V outlets in the Westie.
Resolution: Installed two 120V outlets in the Westie, powered by a "700 watt" (560 watt continuous, 700 watt for five minutes, 1000 watt peak) inverter.[2][3]

Problem: The left-front turn signal is burnt out.
Resolution: Cannot reproduce problem in driveway.

Problem: The clamp for the positive terminal of the aux battery is broken (albeit functional).
Reason: Existing problem that we were not aware of until we replaced the battery.
Proposed resolution: Visit $LOCAL_CAR_STORE, purchase new battery clamps.

Problem: Dale's back does not like him.
Reason: 100 Ah car batteries weigh around 80 pounds (35 kg).
Proposed resolution: Do not carry 100 Ah car batteries up a flight of stairs unnecessarily.

Problem: It is no longer possible to power the fridge from the aux battery.
Reason: Fridge socket is no longer connected to aux battery.
Proposed resolution: Reconnect fridge socket to aux battery.

So I think that's three problems fixed and three new ones. Hmm... Maybe today wasn't as productive as I thought.

[0] One battery for starting the engine and running the essential electronics, and one for running the fridge and florescent lights. And a 120 amp alternator to recharge the batteries.
[1] Meaning we could use it run the computer equipment, but only for extremely short periods of time, unless we wanted to either run the engine or kill the battery.
[2] I think need to up the dosage on the cynicism supplements. I saw "700 Watt" and automatically assumed that meant 700 watt continuous, which should be more than enough. I'm not so sure about the 560 watt rating.
[3] No, I do not have the manual in front of me. No, I have not seen the manual since I first set the thing up about eight hours ago. Yes, I read the manual, but only once.

On Schuster's Conundrum

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:50:08 GMT

Someone (probably from ASR) mentioned Schuster's Conundrum in my presence. I scratched my head a bit, and then googled. And came up with this.

Stereoscopic images on a computer screen. I think "Ow" is the appropriate word of the day here. Especially since some of the images there require cross-eyed viewing. On the images where it is possible, I strongly recommend parallel-eye viewing, if you know how to do it.

On Spring

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 21:15:35 GMT

Spring has officially sprung; I was out playing Ultimate Frisbee last night. Two games, both three on three, which is about the smallest sane game. On a nice field of alternate wet grass and mud. I've blogged previously about what happens when you combine Dale, Ultimate, and a wet, muddy field, so I won't repeat too much of that.
I think only one person ended up on the ground yesterday, but he^H^HI definitely more than made up for everyone else's dislike of the ground. My most impressive fall was when I'm charging along after the Frisbee and my right foot decided it needed to come forward somewhere to the left of my left foot. Anyone who has tried this knows that this usually results in the right foot getting caught behind the left ankle, and this time was no different.
Now ask me what parts of me hurt.
Go ahead. Ask.
...
The tip of my left middle finger. From a lousy catch while we were tossing the Frisbee before the game. Tripping over my own two feet while charging along at full tilt? No injury except to my pride. An hour and a half of chasing a flying disk and the only injury I get is in the first fifteen minutes, when we aren't even playing. Please don't ask how I manage that.

On being tech-support

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 06:59:18 GMT

Somehow, ([de|il]lusions of competency, maybe) I often manage to get drafted into doing this whole tech-support thing. Usually, I know what I'm getting into before I agree to the job, but this time, I'm not so sure that's the case.

My job will be to make "it" work. "it" involves four computers, several scanners, several cell-phones, a power inverter (maybe two), and several pieces of hardware I have probably never seen before. "it" will be installed in a Volkswagen Westfalia (not that one, though), and will be used for digital conversion and/or archiving of just about any analog data: Home videos, photographs, negatives, slides, important documents, &c.

One of my cousins is heading up this project. If you (or any of your relatives) are interested, and live in North America, it would be appreciated if you/they would fill out this survey, so she (and I) have some idea what exactly we are going to be doing. There will be another survey coming soon, and I'll post it as soon as I hear about it. If you do not live in .us, feel free to contact me by any reliable method, and I'll forward your location on to my cousin, but don't get your hopes up too high. Hawaii is also rather unlikely.

(Disclaimer: that survey should not be considered an order form, but more of a "What services would you use if we came to your area?")

On Mississippi

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 06:28:25 GMT

As some of you are aware, I was in Southern Mississippi for my spring break, hanging drywall. I went down with nine other people, and met up with about ninety more when we got to the church where we were staying.

As I said, there were ten of us: the director of Wesley Foundation and his wife, three students, the mother of one of the students, three random men who attached to our group because "The Indiana group" (more on that later) was full, and myself. We met at Wesley about 6:00 (GMT -5) Saturday morning, ate breakfast, packed, and hit the road.

We arrived at our destination at about 22:15 (GMT -6), and discovered that we were not the only group from Indiana. We were not even the only group from West Lafayette. There were four groups that stayed basically the whole week: One group from Virginia, one from Indianapolis (in .in.us) and two from West Lafayette (also .in.us). These were, respectively: "the Virginia group", "the Indiana group", "the West Lafayette group" and "the other West Lafayette group". Which WL group was "other" depended on which group was yours.
There were also several groups that came and/or went partway though the week.

In total, there were around a hundred people showering, eating, and sleeping in this not-particularly-large church each night.

The majority of the men, including me, slept in the sanctuary. One of the other men said that it was "like sleeping in the middle of a frog pond with all the snoring". I wouldn't say it was that bad, but woe betide you if you need either pitch black or dead silence to fall asleep. Neither happened, ever. I sleep in a room with four computers, (They're not all mine, honestly! Only three of them are.) so this did not present a particular problem for me; in fact, I nearly require white noise in order to fall asleep.

Food was provided by a few members of the Indiana group, who basically spent the whole day, every day, cooking, cleaning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning.

Sunday, we went out driving along Highway 90. You should see route 15 there; we started there and went west. If you go far enough west, along 90, you'll find a bridge. The satellite images report that the bridge is intact; it is not. Seven months after Katrina, and there have been no visible efforts to repair or replace the bridge. We didn't actually get to the bridge; but we did see plenty while we were out there.
- Buildings that looked fine. As long as you didn't look below 30-40 feet (9-12 m) above sea-level. below about 20 feet above, there was nothing but steel structural members. Everything else had been washed away by the storm surge.
- Buildings that looked fine. As long as you only looked at the foundation, and not the building, which didn't exist any more.
- Sign posts that were twisted, bent, or otherwise not straight, as they should be.
- Spray-painted "You loot, we shoot" signs, and similar messages.

I spent most of that drive shell-shocked; looking, but not actually seeing.

Monday and Tuesday, the ten of use were hanging drywall at a house that had been flooded up to the ceiling. For those of who haven't done this, it's not particularly easy or fun, and definitely not for those with weak backs. Take rather fragile 4'x8' (1.2m x 2.4m) 60 lb (27 kg) sheet, and hold it on the ceiling. Go get another sheet, and repeat, except this time, make sure it lines up with the previous one. Repeat, until the whole ceiling in covered. Now, do the same procedure in a house where the concepts of right angle and straight line do not exist.
Once the ceiling is done, you can continue with the walls; these are easier, except that now you have to cut relatively accurate holes for switches, outlets, water supply pipes, drain pipes, gas pipes, ...
Wednesday, the St. Andrews group (aka "the [other] West Lafayette group") and two of our students went to the beach. The rest of us stayed at the house, and finished the drywalling around 15:00.
Thursday was spent cleaning yards. We cleaned three yards. The first yard was by far the most interesting (FCVOI). The house was completely gone, and the foundation, although safe, was going to have to be bulldozed. But amidst this destruction, we found a collection of rare coins, a glass tea-cup in apparently perfect condition, and a ceramic plate sitting on the slab, also in perfect condition.
Friday we left at "5:30" (again with the "Ain't democracy great" thing, both on the leaving a day early, and on the leaving that absurdly early in the morning) to go back to WL. I put it in quotes, because we didn't actually leave until 6:00 (GMT -6). The trip was uneventful, and we arrived in WL at ~21:00 (GMT -5).

Here on this college campus, we live in this nice little bubble wherein a "poor student" is one who can't afford to put gas in their car. The concept of "poor" as in "I don't have a place to live" or as in "I own nothing but the clothes on my back" simply doesn't exist, and every now and again we need a reminder of how blessed we truly are. Here I am with three computers, at least two weeks worth of clothes, at least three pairs of shoes (possibly more, depending on how you count) a roof over my head, a warm bed, .... There are many who would count themselves lucky to have even one of those.

On spending a whole day running around doing nothing.

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 07:59:08 GMT

I had a very full day tod^H^H^Hyesterday, but I feel like I did basically nothing.

The telephone woke me up about five minutes before my alarm clock was to go off; a friend of mine (I'll call him Ed, because that is his name) needed to go to the emergency room[0]. My usual form of transportation (a bicycle), however, is not suited to taking people to the hospital. I got dressed, got on my bike, went to borrow my grandmother's car[1], and went to pick up Ed. He also needed to go to the police station to get the accident report, so I took him there, and then to the hospital. I returned the car so my grandmother could run the errand she was planning to run, but instead discovered that she wouldn't be running the errand at all because there was a furnace guy at her house.

I got back home and spent a little time fighting with my new Ubuntu Linux install[3], and got basically nothing done.

Ed then called me again and told me that he was free to go home; the swelling he was worried about was normal. So I go get the car again, pick up Ed, bring him home, return the car (At this point, the furnace guy was gone, and the furnace was working again), and come back here.

By this time, it's almost 13:00. I have four other errands to run. Aldersgate's monthly deposit needed to happen rather NOW-ish, so it did, and I had a check to deposit too, but to a different bank. I did both of those, came back here, and commenced beating myself up for forgetting to buy shift cables for my bike, as I had just broken one on Wednesday. (I keep spares so I can fix my bike and then bike down to the shop to buy replacement cables.) However, I thought I'd try to figure out why on earth I had SEVEN brake cables. Determining that turned out to be rather difficult, since I had only five brake cables. The other two were shifter cables, so I decided that it was not necessary to purchase more. (I still don't know why I have five brake cables, though.)

That leaves one more errand; dealing with a credit-card transaction that failed for reasons of "The merchant (In this case, Amtrak[4]) wrote down the wrong credit-card number." There are three steps to this procedure: Fill out a form, stick it in an envelope, and address, stamp, and send said envelope. To fill out the form, a invoice number is required, and I saw no invoice number, so I had to call Amtrak to clear that up." That finished, I discovered that (1) sticking a letter in an envelope you do not have is rather difficult, and (2) attaching a 39 cent stamp you do not have to the envelope you do not have is also rather difficult. Off to the post office to fix both of those problems, and to mail the letter.

Then back (now, ~16:30) for more futzing with Ubuntu. This time, I was successful. Successful in destroying my ability to sudo, that is. Since root has no password by default (not "a blank password"; "no password". As in "There is no password that permits you to log in as root.") and I had not changed that, this presents a problem. It took me a while to convince myself that this was indeed an immovable object, but once I did, I pulled out my irresistible force (the install CD), and tried again. Of course, an install takes somewhat over an hour, and I'm leaving for an overnight retreat in less than an hour. But I figure I'll hopefully get the interactive part done, and then let it finish overnight.

We were scheduled to meet for the Mardi Gras retreat at Wesley at 18:00, and then head to Romney UMC. This we did as planned, but only six of us showed up. We decided to continue as planned, but cut it short. (Hence the reason I'm here now, and not there.) I had a good time, though. Besides me, there were five lovely ladies, and we spent about half an hour cooking: salad, pizza, brownies, "Monkey Bread" (another desert), then two to three hours eating. (well, eating and talking. Though I mostly listened.) What's not to like? After this, we cleaned up, and did a guided meditation. At this point, it's nearly 23:00, and the majority wanted to visit one the house of the ladies, to see her wedding and bridesmaids dresses[5]. We stuck around there until 24:00, the agreed upon time to return, and well, that's my day in a nutshell. We did spend some time exploring the church; it's a nice little old church, with all sorts of nooks and crannies.

I got in a little time on NFORenum, but not much. Today (Saturday) should be much simpler, and with luck, will involve a release.

[0] He was the bicyclist half of of a bike/car accident on Thursday. Looks horrible, and is moving like someone in pain and/or on massive painkillers, but no major injuries. The driver stuck around for the accident report, which is a very good thing.
[1] Sure, it's pink. So? It's got four doors, five^Wsix wheels[2], and all I have to pay for is gas.
[2] But only five tires. Think about it; you should figure it out eventually.
[3] I requested that it install the "server". I would have guessed that that would involve such serverish things as ftpd and sshd, and basic Linuxy things like ... Oh, maybe gcc? No. On all three counts. Or, if they're installed, I couldn't find them, and they have neither man nor info pages. I'm rather unimpressed.
[4] I do basically all my long-distance traveling on Amtrak; it's cheaper and more comfortable than flying, albeit slower.
[5] Ain't democracy great? Though actually I didn't mind; we also watched some of the Olympics (ice skating), and they have a quite friendly dog of the type that Dale is not allergic too.

On "That can't be done because ..."

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 04:25:56 GMT

"... because it can be done."

At least that's what seems to be happening lately when I try to explain why I can't implement something in NFORenum. I tried to explain why a pretty-printer was impossible, and ended up writing one.
I tried to explain why a variational-accessibility check couldn't be done. And ended up writing one.
I should either quit trying to explain why I can't do something, or try to explain more often; depending on whether it's a feature I want to implement or one I'd prefer not to implement.

I guess this is a good thing, and it even makes sense when I think about it, but it's just strange to answer "Why can't you do $FOO?" with "I can."

So, should I explain why I can't do class DC00 TextID checks and random 2 bit-usage checks next?

On overflow errors

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 02:49:45 GMT

I was asked to create a simplified shortest-path generator.
"Simplified" meaning, in this case, "On every step go from the current point to the nearest unvisited point", which is, fortunately, just O(n^2), not NP-hard.

Now, the sample data I was given consists of 13312 points, spread out in a circle of radius ~45000. I spent a little time determining that attempting to calculate Euclidean distances between any two points could result in a 32-bit integer overflow, so I very carefully used 64-bit integers (uint64), as follows:

uint64 distsquared;
/*...*/
uint deltax = abs(point[j].x - point[i].x), deltay = abs(point[j].y - point[i].y);
if(((uint64(deltax))*deltax + (uint64(deltay))*deltay) < distsquared){
    distsquared = deltax*deltax + deltay*deltay;
    /* Other stuff */
}

Anyone spotted the problem there yet?

I didn't, until I trimmed the data-set down to only ~5k points, and pinned down the exactly which point caused the "nearest" algorithm to skip to the other side of the disk, and watched exactly what happened.

If you are still looking for the bug, quit reading until you give up.

The bug? At that point, the square of the distance from the current point to the next point was then about 4.30 billion. Unsigned 32-bit integer overflow happens at about 4.29 billion. And that fifth statement is missing the all-important casts to make it 64-bit multiplication and addition, instead of 32-bit. So, instead of assigning 4.3 billion, it helpfully assigned 10 million. And things proceeded to go downhill from there.

Does anyone have a DWIM module[0] I can borrow? And no, not interested in ACME::DWIM or Parrot::DWIM.[1] Those are for Perl, which doesn't help me much here.

[0] You're on the Internet; look it up!
[1] You're on the Internet; loo^H^H^Hyou're better off not knowing.

On 10-mbit ethernet cards and WinXP

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:26:30 GMT

They don't mix.

OK, so I don't have anything particularly substantial to back me up. What I do have is a computer that had Windows ME installed and was working just fine. Then its owner installed WinXP. And the ethernet card quit.
Correction. Reproduced. And then both cards quit.
Yes. Under WinME, there was one working ethernet card. Under WinXP, there were two different cards. With only one Ethernet port between them. And neither of them worked.
No matter how much anyone insisted that there was only one ethernet port, XP was completely convinced that there were most definitely two ethernet cards.

So, I get paged to fix things.

The apparent problem is that the computer is not getting a DHCP lease. First, I assume it's a network problem. Because that's one of the router's standard failure modes. Bouncing the router didn't fix the problem, so I went on to other things. The first was starting my packet sniffer and sniffing for DHCP packets. --- There weren't any. So I look at the blinkenlights. And I discover that the blinkenlight that should be on isn't. Therefore, it must be a cable problem. I plug both ends of the cable into the switch to test the cable, and ... the blinkenlights turn on.
This leaves only one possible problem. The ethernet card must have died.
Yes, I know. Having hardware die exactly when you install a new OS. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?
For some reason that I can't remember now, I rebooted the computer. Maybe I pulled one of the other PCI cards? Anyway, as the computer started up, I noticed: "Hey! The blinkenlight is ... ... ... *was* on." At this point I became rather curious.
Off goes my computer, out comes its ethernet card, and into the other computer it goes. Boot, and once the drivers are installed, my 10/100 ethernet card works. I go to Windows Update and Google. Neither of them knows about new drivers for either of the two old cards.
To prove to myself it's a driver problem, I inserted an Ubuntu LiveCD and boot off it. My idea was that I could then say "Your card won't work under XP, but it will work under Linux; and you can use that instead, at least until you have time to order a new ethernet card." Of course, in keeping with everything else that's been happening, the CD is corrupt. So I burn a new one. The new one is corrupt too. In the same place, no less. A little peeved at myself for not having done this earlier, I checked the MD5 sum of the CD image. And discovered that the checksum is correct. At this point, I decided that the world hates me and it is time to admit defeat.[0]
I returned the computer to its owner, she acquired a 10/100 ethernet card, and I installed it, turned the computer on, and babysat it while it installed the drivers and commenced working.

The other "ethernet card" turned out to be a modem, BTW. As in one of those things you plug a telephone line into.
Permission to shoot whoever thought that it was a good idea to provide drivers that made XP think a modem was a ethernet card? Please?

[0] I have ordered pressed CDs now. I didn't want to do so; I thought I was perfectly capable of burning my own CDs, but obviously I'm not.

On csrss and eelbwx

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 05:58:28 GMT

Some of you may recognize the second word in that subject line.

In this case, though, it's *NOT* the Microsoft client/server run-time subsystem; rather it's a rather nasty piece of malware, that puts itself in %SystemRoot%\system32\eelbwx.

Its effects are to:
1) Watch for and kill-off/disable all instances of any active firewall or anti-virus, and the same for regedit.
2) Block all outgoing going connections to ports 443 and 1863; possibly others too.
3) Block, via 127.0.0.1 entries in the HOSTS file, access to all common AV download and update sites (avast, symantec, grisoft, mcafee, &c.)

So far, I have managed to keep it from respawning and restarting by manually deleting it in Safe Mode and denying everyone Full Control to eelbwx[0]. A reboot proved the at which point I discovered that it spewed its startup entries in HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Windows. Those were removed, and the hosts file was repaired, removing effects 1 and 3, but #2 is persisting. I don't feel like reinstating access to eelbwx; that feels entirely too much like "Why try your luck?"

If this were my computer, Windows would have been reinstalled some time ago, but it isn't, so I have to try and clean it the correct way, instead of the easy way.

Effects #2 does not appear in Safe Mode with Networking, so some things (like updating AVG Free) can happen. Others (like Windows Update) cannot, because they require unsafe mode only things.

[0] *nix equivalent:
# chown root:root eelbwx
# chmod 0 eelbwx

On Weather

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:14:03 GMT

The National Weather Service says:

Today...Snow in the afternoon. Snow accumulation around 3 inches. Highs in the mid 20s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 100 percent.
Tonight...Snow in the evening...Then chance of snow after midnight. Snow accumulation around 3 inches. Total snow accumulation around 6 inches. Lows around 14. Southeast winds up to 10 mph shifting to the west after midnight. Chance of snow 80 percent.

Six inches of snow on the ground tomorrow. Provided I don't have to actually go anywhere, I'll be great. I've tried the road-bike-on-powder thing before. It doesn't always work very well.

Hmm... I know I've seen road tires for a mountian bike (2+ inch tire); I wonder if the other way around exists.

On cooperative stores and behaving bicycles.

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 05:58:48 GMT

That innertube that blew at the valve stem was returned to the store today, for a free replacement, and I purchased another one so I'd have a spare[0]. I installed one of the tubes, and everything seems to be behaving. I also practically soaked my chain in WD-40, since I had the rear wheel off, and it (the chain, not the wheel) usually needs oiling, especially during the winter.

Can anyone explain why is it *always* the rear wheel that has problems? The last time I had to do anything with my front wheel was on the bike trip back in August.

[0] It's a whole lot more pleasant to bike to the bike store to get parts, so I keep at least one spare brake cable, shift cable, and innertube on hand at all times.