Rants

1,000,000 Microseconds

I use AutoCAD at work and ever since they upgraded me to version 2007 a couple of months ago I routinely have to attempt starting it a half dozen times before it will load. I will invariably report that it can’t find a license sever. I hit ‘Cancel’ and instead of just shutting off it will pop up a ‘Warning’ box that informs me I’m not authorized to use that application. I have to hit an ‘OK’ button to clear the screen allowing me another attempt. I am not the only one either, every AutoCAD user has the same issue.

Turns out our licensing server resides not on a box in our computer room, but in one at our company HQ, 700 miles away in New Jersey, so AutoCAD wasn’t getting a response in a timely manner. To fix the problem and environment variable had to be added to everyone’s PC — FLEXLM_TIMEOUT=1000000.

I know the speed of light is fast, but apparently on our network it can’t routinely make a 1400 mile round trip in under a second.

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Bones

One of the TV shows in our Netflix rotation is Bones, it’s like the X-Files on valium. It’s got a handsome FBI agent, a pretty female doctor that have polar opposite personalities and they solve crimes, there is even some underlying sexual tension tossed in. But Bones involves bodies in various states of decomposition not UFOs and monsters. And it is more like the usual approved for the widest TV audience possible than the ground breaking series the X-Files was.

The one thing that always annoyed me about the show was the intro. As the theme music played (Massive Attack must have a deal with Fox) they showed a montage of the characters in scenes from the show as the actor’s names are flashed on the screen. Trouble was, they weren’t in sync, David Boreanaz’s name over the image of Emily Deschanel, etc. Annoying.

We received Disc 1 of Season 2 last week and I guess I wasn’t the only one who found that practice bothersome, the names and faces now lined up.

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Gallimaufry

Sometime in the last month or so my 5 month old monitor at work has started to lose it’s focus. At first I thought it was my eyes (hey, I’m getting old), but other stuff that far away was clear. It was slight at first, but a couple weeks ago it got so bad that now the first thing I have to do in the morning after logging on is to right click the desktop, select Properties, hit the Settings tab and change the color quality from 32 bit to 16 bit. I then change it back to 32 bit and everything becomes crisp and clear. What’s really weird is, I can drag that properties dialog box from one side of the monitor to the other, and on the left side it is fuzzy, on the right, crystal clear.

The city of Aiken must have a very strong tennis lobby. Five years ago there were six tennis courts and four basketball courts at the main recreation center. Three years ago they built 7 more tennis courts, including one really nice clay court. Two years ago they converted half of the basketball courts into a skate park with 8 or 10 aluminum half pipes, ramp, jumps and railings. Tonight on our way out to get an ice cream cone we passed by the rec center and I noticed they are resurfacing the skate park. Where do you think they moved all the aluminum apparatuses? On to a couple of the old tennis courts? Nope, they put them on one of the two remaining basketball courts…

I wish Mark had a blog, because he had a perfect post for tonight. He told me a little story this morning about buying a 12 pack of sodas on the way to work. I’d try and tell you about it, but I know I wouldn’t do it justice, let’s just say it involved a torn cardboard box and corralling errant cans in the parking lot of a quickie mart. Not just once, not twice, but three times, with it culminating with a pinhole in one can causing it to do what firemen call a wild hose.

Tomorrow — Racing A Doughnut Truck (and losing.)

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
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Fees

Today our summer intern was lamenting the cost of going to college. Not so much just the tuition, but all the fees that get tacked on top, from a $400 lab fee, a $300 engineering fee, down to a parking sticker that is required, but doesn’t guarantee a spot and the 50¢ fee to print a piece of paper in the library. It put me in mind of the 1980 movie Popeye.

The Tax Man: You just docked?
Popeye: I has.
The Tax Man: Ah ha, let’s see here, that’ll be 25? docking tax.
Popeye: What for?
The Tax Man: Where’s your sea craft?
Popeye: It ain’t no sea craft, it’s me dinghy and it’s under the wharf.
The Tax Man: Ah ha. ahh-ha. This your goods?
Popeye: They is.
The Tax Man: Yeah. You’re new in town right?
Popeye: If you call this a town, yes.
The Tax Man: Well, first of all, there’s 17? new-in-town tax, and there’s 45? rowboat-under-the-wharf tax, and one dollar leaving-your-junk-lying-around-the-wharf tax, so all together, you owe the Commodore $1.87.
Popeye: Uh, who’s this Commodore?
The Tax Man: Is that the nature of question? There’s a nickel question tax.
…
Popeye: How come carrots is a dollar?
Geezil: $1.50. You buy what I don’t feel like selling will cost you $2.00.
Popeye: [Takes the carrots and tosses Geezil a nickel]
Geezil: Ah ah. Nope, this is a nickel.
Popeye: I’m payin’ what I feels like payin’.
The Tax Man: You’re not up to no good are you? Because if you are there’s a 25? up to no good tax.

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CJ8

Donna decided to mow the lawn yesterday evening around dusk, because it was as cool as it was going to be until about 3:00 AM this morning (and the neighbors might not appreciate it happening then), but she never did get it done. Never even started.

Because I never got the lawn mower started. After about 30 pushes of the little red button and 80 pulls on the cord thingie with no luck, I started to think there might be something wrong. The gas tank had plenty of fluid. I knocked a thin layer of dirt of the foam air cleaner filter. I removed the spark plug. AHA! The end of the plug that is stuck inside the engine was covered in an awful lot of black powder, sort of looked like a Wooly Willy face toy. I sprayed it with some brake cleaner and that got rid of the fuzz, but it was still so black that no light could escape it’s surface. I tried to small file I had and managed to turn it light gray, so I tried it in the mower again. After a half dozen pulls, I knew I wasn’t going to get the thing started.

Today, on the way home from work, we stopped in the little hardware store downtown and bought a Champion CJ8 spark plug. The lawn is now several inches shorter.

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Mixmaster

Well I finally got around to starting to paint the walls in the middle bedroom tonight. Got a wall and a half painted before giving up.

Donna originally wanted me to paint it the same color as the other green bedroom, but I didn’t have enough paint to do it. Trying to not buy another gallon of paint, she then suggested I used the color from the hallway. I didn’t want to do that, I barely like it in the hallway, its too light, I wanted something darker. Then I had an idea, I could take some of the other cans of paint I have and pour parts into the really light green and maybe come up with something suitable.

I added what little I had left of the other green bedroom color. I poured in a heaping dose of a forest green that was used in one of the bathrooms (prior to remodeling). Then I tossed in a few dollops of a a sort of olive green that was used on the lower kitchen cabinets. Almost there, it just needed to be a little darker. I added a pinch of some flat black I had used for the interior of the fireplace a long while back. I now a full gallon of a nice green that looked real close to what was in the existing green bedroom. Perfect.

I used a small brush to cut in all the edges and corners. When I started using the roller I was getting black dots at intervals. Ack! Somehow the black paint had coagulated into little beads of black that were invisible in the tray or can, but when rolled on the wall they left behind little black spots. I found that when they popped up I could spot them on the roller and then kind of disperse them using a small brush loaded with paint from the tray. Then with careful reapplication I could blend the paint on the wall to make them disappear (I thought.) After a dinner break I went back in to start painting again, but now that the paint had dried I could see that where I thought the black dots had vanished, they had actually been sort of spread out real good.

Tomorrow after work we are going to stop at Home Warehouse Store and pick up a gallon of paint, so I can start over.

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That’s Enough Human Contact

This morning after a not so special breakfast at IHOP, Donna got lukewarm water with not so mixed in powder instead of the hot chocolate she requested, we had a very interesting visit to the North Augusta Post Office. And I think I figured out why Postal employees “Go Postal”, it is not so much their working conditions, but more like having to deal with surly customers all day.

They aimed for camp, but fell short. There were some clever lines that will probably be seen as signature quotes on internet message boards and I actually sort of liked the musical numbers. See it for free before its gone (Sunday, July 20th @ midnight.)

Dr Horrible?s Sing-Along Blog

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