Playing in the dirt
I spent the better part of yesterday digging up about 24 square feet of the side yard to make room for a raised bed garden. Late in the afternoon, a friend stopped by and helped with installing the raised bed frames and getting them level. I'm pretty sore today in places where I forgot I had muscles.
Today I've got to go get a whole boatload of peat moss to fluff up the soil. Our soil is really sticky and clay like.
Posted by John on June 5, 2006
It Doesn't Suck
I think that it's funny that Bare Bones Software (the makers of BBedit) have registered "It Doesn't Suck" as a trademark.
Posted by John on April 12, 2006 | Comments (0)
Double Yolk
I got a pleasant surprise this morning while I was making french toast for breakfast. The first egg I cracked had double yolks. I liked the look of it so much, I had to take a picture. The really neat part was the way the two yolks were all squished together coming out of the egg and then slowly separated into what you see in the top of the picture.
Posted by John on April 9, 2006
Online Rebate Submission - It's About Time!
So... I went to Staples this morning to pick up some DVD-Rs. Pretty routine trip; run in, grab DVD-Rs, stand in line, check out. While I was in line, I noticed that they had TurboTax sitting there in a POS display. I thought to myself, "Better get that too, as I think we have all the various and assorted tax information now and it would be nice to figure out if we're going to owe or get a refund." Apparently there is a "rebate" deal where you get a $10 Staples gift card with the purchase of TurboTax. I paid for my goods, got the rebate receipt and then waited a bit as the cashier asked the other cashier if she had any of the "Easy Rebate" bag inserts. I get all the paperwork, shove it all in the bag and go off to run my other errands.
Later on, I get home and check out the receipts and such. Much to my amazement, Staples has actually made it easy for you to file for rebates now. It seems that now on any Staples rebate offers, there will be an offer code and an Easy Rebate ID code. To file for your rebate, you simply go to stapleseasyrebates.com, enter the two codes and fill in your mailing address info. Ta Da! Done. No stamps, no envelopes, no bullshit. This is so easy, my friend Emory would even use it, and he never files rebates. Let's hope that everyone else follows suit.
Posted by John on February 4, 2006
Matrix shows you how to get Flock of Seagulls hair
A stylist working for Matrix is apparently a fan of the old Flock of Seagulls look. At the end of their selection of hairstyles for men, all promenently featuring their Trix line of products mind you, is this modern look at Mike Score's unforgettable hairdoos.
The thing that really kills me about this styling guide is that 80% of the men's styles require a flat iron. I don't know a single guy who could manage to flat iron his own hair. I know I'd end up burning half my hair off, which would really blow considering I spent the last year or so growing it out. That's something you really need a stylist to do for you. Guess it's time to get my own personal stylist. I'll get right on that once I find that winning lottery ticket. I think it's somewhere in the couch.
Posted by John on May 7, 2005
Prefab Housing gets swank in Germany
The modernist prefab housing trend is gaining some traction in Germany. As a fan of modern design and prefab housing, I fully support this. There are some beautiful prefab structures being sold these days, so much better than the crap that went up in the 1970s. Also, pick up a copy of the April/May 2005 issue of Dwell to see an article on a cool prefab apartment complex that is going up in Manchester, UK. If I ever end up there for work, I'll definitely look into getting a flat in that building.
Posted by John on May 3, 2005
Home Buyers are Stupid
Apparently a number of folks who own Frank Lloyd Wright homes from his usonian period are having are hard time selling them. This is just plain sad. According to this AP article on Yahoo news, the average home buyer is so hung up on multi-car garages and sprawling kitchens and bathrooms that they won't even consider the beauty and elegance that is a Wright home. If I had $400K and wanted to live in Michigan, I'd kill to buy a Wright home. Apparently, I wouldn't have to.
Posted by John on January 6, 2005
AIX is hell
This week at work, I've been beating my head against the wall trying to get AIX installed on a couple of machines. I had to get AIX 4.3.3 installed on a RS/6000 B50 server and AIX 5.3 installed on an eSeries p520. Both were no end of trouble for me.
First off, I'm no slouch when it comes to installing Unix machines. I've built tons of Solaris machines, a couple of HP-UX boxes, and numerous Linux and BSD machines. I don't shy from the command line, rather I embrace it. I figured these would be a piece of cake. Boy howdy, was I in for a surprise.
Getting 4.3.3 on the B50 seemed pretty straight forward. Hook up laptop to serial console (9600 8,N,1). Start machine, insert CD 1, wait for E1F1 on the status indicator and press '5' to force it to boot in the default boot sequence (floppy, CD, tape, hard drive). This all seemed to go fine. Machine boots from CD, install starts, install runs, machine reboots. However, for each of five tries I never got prompted for a root password or IP configuration. No root password set, can't login. Finally on my sixth try this morning, I finally got presented with SMIT before the reboot. I have no idea what made it work this morning, perhaps it was the fact that I had IBM tech support on the line for the issue I was having with the p520. Go figure.
Having been frustrated by my lack of success in getting 4.3.3 on the B50, I decided to take a break yesterday and try to get 5.3 on the p520. Big mistake there. Again, I hook up to the console port (9600, 8,N,1) insert CD 1 and boot the machine. What do I get? Gobbelty gook! OK, looks like a baud rate mismatch. Try all rates from 2400-38400. Nothing. No dice. After getting setup with IBM support, I get a tier two engineer on the line (who has to take this issue to a tier 3 engineer) who finally tells me that the correct setting is 19200, 8N1. Seems that IBM's hardware engineers got tired of slow text and changed the default console speed to 19200. I swear I tried that yesterday, but again, I think the threat of having tech support on the line whipped the machines into line and convinced them to work for me.
After some thought, I finally figured that part of the problem that I was having with the B50 was that I was running my laptop on battery and it wanted to suspend after 5 minutes of inactivity. This may have wreaked a little havoc with the serial connection.
Morals of the story: when making console connections to install AIX on IBM PPC systems, either use a dumb terminal, set your laptop to not suspend or bring your damn AC adapter into the lab. Also, console connections to the newer p-series eServers should be made at 19200.
Posted by John on October 27, 2004
Mac OS X Marklar Icon
I was kind of bored on Sunday, so I figured I would try my hand at making an icon for Mac OS X.
For the all the Marklars out there, here a translation:
"I was kind of bored on Marklar, so I figured I would try my marklar at making a marklar for marklar."
Posted by John on October 19, 2004