January 9th, 2008 by michael

Here’s Loyal Reader Number One sitting in front of the trailer during one of our campouts this summer. Picture (obviously) taken with the exclusive RAZR-cam.
Fine day today. We’re having rain every other day this week, and today was one of the no-rain days, so I drove. Tomorrow’s a rain day and I’ll be avoiding the inevitable traffic by taking the train.
Speaking of which, I’ve been kind of avoiding the train because I have one round trip left and I still haven’t received my first before-tax ticket voucher. It should be here any day now. I don’t want to buy another ticket before it comes. I guess there are always single tickets while I wait.
Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two have been watching Country Fried Home Videos on the Country Music Channel while Loyal Reader Number Four is at book group tonight. Of course, they don’t want to be associated in any way with the Country Music Channel, but the show is really funny, so they’re willing to take the risk. Don’t worry, Loyal Readers, I won’t tell anybody!
It’s bedtime for me. See you tomorrow.
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January 8th, 2008 by michael

Here’s a bridge in the big English garden in downtown Tokyo. It was a very pretty place, even if a rose garden in Japan is a bit unusual.
Short shrift tonight. My Wednesday meeting has been changed to Tuesday this year, and it’s already late.
I had to give three layoff notices to subordinates today. It was not a good day. Hopefully, we’ll be able to place all three within the company. We didn’t want to lose any of these guys anyway. They’re victims of layoffs on other programs. Sigh.
Anyway. I’m loving the new computer. It is way faster than my old one (sorry, Loyal Reader Number Four!). The Missing Sync finally syncs my Palm correctly. I ripped a couple of DVDs the other day; they took about two hours to convert, versus about 15 with the old machine. Those two fast Intel cores are really as good as they say.
And I need to quit already. See you tomorrow.
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January 7th, 2008 by michael

Here are Loyal Reader Number Three and a friend pointing out some glaring errors in the transcontinental railroad construction. I can see your problem right there! That guy in the background was a real stiff.
No time to blog tonight. We had a great home evening, topped off by a great chocolate cake with Cool Whip. Yum. The lesson was good, the activity was fun, and our calendars are fully coordinated for the rest of the month.
The weekend was fine too – it was stake conference weekend, so there were plenty of meetings to attend. Sadly, I’ve been feeling sick for several days, and I had a terrible day on Sunday, so I stayed home and slept all day. I’m feeling much better today, possibly because of all the rest.
The church has published a video correcting misconceptions about Latter-day Saints. For your enlightenment, I present it here in its entirety:
If the embedded version doesn’t show up in your browser, try clicking here.
The video was originally used to help news people covering the 2002 winter olympics understand the church better and know who and what to believe and what to ignore. It’s possible it at least partially served its purpose. Maybe not, though. News people aren’t typically exactly the brightest stars in the universe, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I’ve only seen the first part of the video, but it looks pretty good.
And I really need to get to bed. See you tomorrow.
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January 4th, 2008 by michael

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve showing off her birthday gifts. She’s looking not too anxious to see the flash.
No time to post. I’m actually using the Wonders of Blogger at a little past 2:00 on Saturday morning. I’ve been mucking around with the Mac and it’s late.
Mac mucking is going well, though. I have VMware installed, and it’s really cool. I have virtual copies of Windows 2000 and Ubuntu Linux running. They both run pretty much perfectly. The only problem I’ve seen is that the Palm emulator doesn’t beep right – I get a default Windows sound. That’s a little bit unfortunate, since I’m working on my Morse code program, but I’ll figure out a way to work around it. It may not be VMware’s fault anyway – Windows has been known to be a little funky too.
I also have everything installed and working on the Mac itself. Printers are installed and working, all the applications are functional, and I’ve even replaced several of the PowerPC versions of apps with Intel versions. On top of that, I have the Android development system installed on the Mac and it’s working great too.
One other thing I got accomplished this evening was to finally get Loyal Reader Number Four’s old email messages onto her Mac. When her old PC was about to die, I copied her Microsoft Outlook files – mail and contacts – onto Larry. I was able to get the contacts imported into Entourage by bringing them into Mail and exporting them from there into Entourage. The emails were a much tougher nut, though. Outlook saves everything into a single file, and they don’t offer any kind of migration path from there to Entourage (both products were made by Microsoft, by the way). I was finally able to import the Outlook file into Outlook Express on my virtual W2K machine. From there, I copied the files into a folder on which I ran a free converter some kind soul wrote to change them to MBOX files, which Entourage likes. I just had to change the file endings from .mbx to .mbox and then run an Applescript some other kind soul wrote that changes the .mbox text files to .mbox-style text files. That script was actually written for MBOX files exported from Thunderbird, but it worked here too. Then it was a simple matter to import the files directly into Entourage (transferring them from my virtual W2K machine to Larry to LRN4’s machine first, of course). Whew.
It rained and blew like crazy today. The pool was full nearly to overflowing, so we spent a few hours draining it out. The pond‘s full too, but I’m not planning to go out there to drain it until the lawn dries out a bit. The rain’s supposed to stay here for a few more days, but I think the high winds are over now.
Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.
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January 3rd, 2008 by michael

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve opening one of her many birthday cards a couple of months ago. Having a good time.
The new Mac’s here! Loyal Reader Number Two and I got it unboxed and
plugged in late this afternoon, and I’m using it right now. Sadly, I can’t yet get it set up exactly the way I want it. I had previously set up the new 500 GB drive to be my boot disk with the old Mac. When I tried to do the same with the new Mac, it told me I had to reformat that drive before it would work with an Intel-based machine. Can do, but I need to get all the hundreds of gigabytes of data off of it first. Sadly, it’s too much to copy it all to the same computer, so I’m in the middle of moving files all over the network. Then I’ll reformat the big drive, install OS X on it, and move all my files back. It will take a
couple of days. Sigh.
On the other hand, it won’t take forever, and I like the machine very much. It looks identical to my old one, but it has a lot more
guts. And it can
run Windows. Simultaneously with OS X. Not that I really want to run Windows, but I have a couple of
development platforms that only work there.
Decent day otherwise. It rained most of the afternoon, and it’s supposed to really start raining hard and blowing later this evening. They’re predicting
gusts up to 65 MPH. That’s a strong wind. I just hope nothing blows through the windows.
Nothing much else to report, and I want to get back to the file transfer, so I’ll
end. See you tomorrow.
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