morrowlife

Here’s yet another in my extensive and popular Statue series. This little fella is on a building somewhere in Pisa, Italy. Creepy. (Note that, as of Wednesday night, Blogger is having problems and pictures aren’t showing up. Drop by later and it will be there. And it will definitely be worth the wait. Creepy.)

Another Extremely Short Shrift night. I worked until about 7:15 this evening. The good thing about that is that it took only 1:15 to get home – basically a nonstop flight (link note: I didn’t speed, but I find the picture amusing anyway). The bad thing is that it was still 8:30 before I got here. Had dinner, looked at a couple of things on the interweb, jacuzzified with the family, and sat down to blog. And it’s already time for bed.

Loyal Reader Number Two is busily installing a new copy of Windows 2000 on his machine. I’m not sure what brought this on, other than somewhat flaky behavior the last little while. I think he’s going to need a new motherboard before much longer. It’s really nice to have one PC in the family still, even though LRN2 wishes he had a Mac. Doesn’t everybody?

Worked like a dog today. The Loyal Readers are coming to work tomorrow. We’re going to go around and look at cool things between meetings, so it ought to be an easier day. Then we camp.

No posts tomorrow or Friday – camping prevents them. See you on Monday.

Here’s another one in my famous statue series. I think my Loyal Readers will recognize this famous actor.

Fine day today. It was warm, sunny, and beautiful. For the first time this year, I open-air motored in both directions. It was just above 50 degrees when I left the house at 5:20. That’s my minimum departure temperature. With the windows up and the heater on full, it’s reasonably comfortable. I was cold when I got there, but not overly chilled. And the afternoon drive was beyond perfect.

Spent a couple hours this morning in the lab, which I enjoy. We were trying to get one of our new automated products working. It’s almost there. Maybe next week.

Solaris is working! It certainly took long enough. As all my Loyal Readers doubtless know, Solaris is the Sun Microsystems brand of Unix. It’s the Unix we use at work. They’ve made it open-source. I downloaded the most recent version and tried installing it in VMWare on my Mac. I got all the way through the installation process, only to have the system tell me I had installed the 64-bit version of the OS in a 32-bit virtual machine. Oops. Deleted that file and started over again. It appeared to install correctly until I went to reboot it after the install. It just sat there. After a few minutes of non-response, I deleted that file and tried several more times with various installation options. They all did the same thing – either refused to boot because of the 64-bit/32-bit problem or just sat there. Finally, I tried one more option just before I left for work this morning, leaving it to install in my absence. When I got home, I tried rebooting after yet another successful install. It sat there again. This time I just left it and went on to other things. Lo and behold, it booted! Turns out Solaris takes a VERY long time to boot and is apparently non-responsive during that time. So most of yesterday’s installations were actually successful. I’m doing one more install now, this time telling it it’s getting Solaris, so it can add its special VMWare tools. Long process, but success!

Now I just need to figure out what I wanted Solaris for in the first place. As of now, it’s pretty much just a curiosity. But a very pretty curiosity.

I’m listening to this week’s James Lileks Diner. I like all his work. You have to recognize, though, that his free stuff takes a backseat to his real job, so his delightful website is plagued with broken links, missing links, circular links, and just about every other navigational error you can imagine. The design is beautiful and the content is voluminous and highly entertaining, though. Highly recommended, as always.

Sadly, this week’s Diner has no MP3 link, so I can’t download it to the iPod. It’s available only from Lileks’s .Mac page and can’t be saved unless you have QuickTime Pro. Which I do not have. So I’m listening to it online, which is my very least favorite way to hear it. But listen anyway.

As mentioned before, we’re going to visit Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve tomorrow morning. They got a new sofa and we’re getting their old one, which Loyal Reader Number Four and I really love. We got rid of our small blue sofa yesterday or the day before. it was extremely comfortable, but LRN4 never liked it. We only had it a few months, but I believe it irked her every single time she walked into the house. So we’re getting a beautiful, if slightly less comfortable, green one. Looking forward to the visit.

Otherwise, not much planned for the weekend. I need to do a few church things – make some phone calls, talk to some people, etc. That’s about it, though. Oh, I also need to get some sleep. Only got five hours last night, which was not enough. So if you need me, I’ll be relaxing.

Have a great weekend.

Here’s a close look at my mighty steed on the Great America carousel. Pretty serious-looking fella there.

Not much to report again today. Left for work at 5:00 again and got there a few minutes after 6:30. I did manage to get back on the road shortly after 4:00 this afternoon, so I was home by 6:00. It felt so early!

Visited for a few minutes this evening with my friend Bill and his wife Carol. He and I are in the group leadership together now. He’s leaving tomorrow on a 10-14 day vacation with his 9-year-old grandson. The length of the trip is flexible because he’s not sure when he’ll get fed up with the grandson. I wished him well and assured him things are in good hands while he’s gone. Carol said the house will be quiet with Bill gone. And she didn’t seem overly upset about that. Hmmm.

We’re expecting a heat wave! It was 65 degrees here in Lardville yesterday, 70 today, and it’s expected to be 78 tomorrow, 86 on Friday, and 88 on Saturday. It’ll cool back into the 70’s a few days after that, but I’m looking forward to at least a brief taste of summer. Maybe we’ll be able to use the pool a little. Probably not, though. Still too cold. Loyal Reader Number Two will probably jump in, though. He likes cold water.

I’ve been fiddling around with VMWare again. Tried to install FreeDOS and couldn’t make it work. It can’t seem to boot from a virtual CD-ROM. It had problems booting from a real CD-ROM too, come to think of it. Maybe it wasn’t a properly bootable CD, though. I located and installed an online version of that OS, complete with abandonware DOS versions of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. It ran, but extremely s..l..o..w..l..y. I dumped it and gave up, seeing as how I’m not really interested in DOS. Now I’m downloading the free version of Solaris and will try that one out. It’ll be cool to have that OS available, assuming I can get it to work. It’s pretty big, though, and I’m not sure I want to dedicate the disk space to it permanently.

On the other hand, I’m still not sure I’m happy dedicating my entire 80GB internal hard drive to Time Machine. On the other other hand, I still have about 280GB of empty space on my 500GB external boot disk, so what’s the worry? Other than that disks tend to fill up over time, no matter how big they are. Maybe it’s best to leave the backups where they are.

Time for dessert and bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another in my always-popular Paris Statue series. Not content with having her own wings, this lady feels the need to hang around with other birds. Notice the clouds. That’s pretty much how it looked the whole time we were there. Too gray.

It looks like our house buyers are backing out of the deal. That didn’t last long. We’ll know for sure tomorrow morning, but I’m not counting on it. Besides, if they can’t stand a little bit of negotiation, I certainly don’t want to deal with them on inspections. Best to let these people walk on by. Of course, this complicates the household goods move plan, but that’s where we are. We absolutely need to decide tomorrow morning whether we’re being packed up next Tuesday or not. That’s way too late to change it anyway, but we just might have to do that.

I turned the reins over to the new scoutmaster this evening. I’m kind of sad to be leaving the position. I’ve accomplished some good things in my year, though, and I think he’ll do a fine job. The highlight, of course, has been to work with Readers Number One and Two.

Speaking of scouting, Loyal Reader Number One’s Eagle court of honor is on Friday. We learned today that either our congressman or his Loyal Assistant will be there. How nice of him.

My sister (not a Loyal Reader yet, but maybe I can turn that around) and her family (none of whom are Loyal Readers!) are arriving late tomorrow evening. We’re really excited for their visit and looking forward to an enjoyable holiday weekend. If we don’t have a deal tomorrow morning, we won’t have to be getting ready for the packers the day they leave, so things will be even more relaxing. See, there’s always a bright side to everything. Things are always darkest just before they go completely black. Or something like that.

Work is definitely ramping down. My replacements (three of them were required to take over my work) are starting to take responsibility for the missions, so I’m pretty much cleaning up a few things and getting ready to leave. They’re taking me out to lunch on my last day, which will be nice. It was kind of supposed to be a surprise, but a few people sent me email notes about it. I’ll just have to act surprised.

Sorry about no posts yesterday or Monday. It seems like there are always a million move-related things to do and it’s hard to sit down and chronicle My Fascinating Life. Knowing that my many Loyal Readers are sitting at their keyboards waiting for MFL is what keeps me going.

See you tomorrow.

Nice shorts, dude. This guy’s from Paris, natch.

I’m back from France! I had intended to post every day this week – or at least as close to every day as possible – but my computer’s wifi card wouldn’t play nice with the hotel’s system. Bummer. I guess I did end up posting every day possible after all.

Much more later, but I’m tired tonight. Watch for yet another Very Special Weekend Post.