Results for category "Blog"

Cat Bath

Here’s some funny instructions for cleaning the cat (thankfully our Gato is very easy to clean).

How to bathe the cat.
1. Thoroughly clean toilet.
2. Lift both lids and add shampoo
3. Find and soothe cat as you carry it to the bathroom
4. In one swift movement, place cat in toilet, close both lids and stand on top
so cat can’t escape.
5. The cat will self-agitate and produce ample suds (ignore ruckus from inside
toilet – cat is actually enjoying this).
6. Flush toilet 3 or 4 times. This provides power rinse, which is quite
effective. Cat is too big to go anywhere.
7. Have someone open outside door, stand as far as from toilet as possible and
quickly lift both lids.
8. Clean cat will rocket out of the toilet and outdoors, where he will air dry.
Cat will return when hungry.

Sincerely,
The Dog.

Worry Free

I heard a lot of good things about foriegn cars in terms of reliability, but I’m not believing that so much.

My Mazda Rx8 has been to the dealership a few too many times. Today I’m getting it towed because the battery is completely dead. Jumped it and let it charge for 20 minutes, and less than 24 hours later is was complete dead again.

This is really making me miss my previous car and/or wishing I had gotten a GM product.

Ouch

Don’t move 7 yards of dirt in a weekend by yourself!

I’m recovering pretty well, I was expecting my back to hurt a lot more and my hands too. While we were shoveling (the wife “helped” but hardly enough to save me much pain) I could barely hold the shovel or lift the wheel barrel my hands had so many blisters on them.

So many years of typing has made my hands soft.

DSL Running

Well, the cable connect went down so we decided it was a good time to move over to the DSL.

It should have went smoothly but I decided to install a patch while changing. After rebooting the server would not respond to TCP/IP requested. I removed TCP/IP and added it back and that worked.

So, do you notice the increased speed?

Soon we’ll have real DNS instead of this URLMasking that we have now.

DSL Installed

We got DSL.

Installation/setup/etc took about 2 weeks, including the phone line. Pretty darn impressive.

Haven’t had a chance to move everything over so we’re still mostly using the cable connection. Soon we’ll be on a fatter upload pipe, site should be more responsive. Here’s my log of events:

10/27/2003

Ordered SBC phone service, install scheduled for 10/29/2003, 1-5pm
Ordered SpeakEasy.net DSL service, mentioned 5 days after the phone install my service would be going.

03:30 PM 10/29/2003

SBC Phone service installed and working.

04:00 PM 10/30/2003

Called, the address is verified, I’m just waiting now.

??:?? PM 11/1/2003

called again, got second IP address. changed to Gamer account. still waiting.

11/6/2003

MOdem arrive. Connected it, tried to connect to the net, but no luck.
Called Speakeasy, they said (after a few tests) the loop would be ready at
midnight or sometime tomorrow (11/7). We’ll see.

11/7/2003

Still not working, called and the guy said they had until end of business today to complete it. I’ll keep trying and call after midnight.

11/8/2003

Shortly after midnight it was still not working. Called up Speakeasy and they said there was something not setup on their end. He put me on hold and fixed it and I was up and running. Ran 2 tests on dslreports.com, second one seemed more accurate (first one was testing the connection _to_ speakeasy so it wasn’t leaving their ‘network’) which gave me: 846/599 kbps. The download is pretty slow as i’m supposed to get 1.5Mbits, but the upload is AWESOME compared to the 90kbps we usually get.

No more (free) Red Hat

Seems that Red Hat is ‘going commercial’.

Looks like all that will be available from now on is Red Hat Enterprise, which will cost money. It comes in 3 flavors, but none of them are free. There seems to be a replacement for the free “Red Hat” called The Fedora Project.

Needless to say I’m not all too happy. Maybe its time to switch to BSD. Not that I really know the difference, unix is almost greek to me (while I’m a decent unix user, i’m far from a good admin).

New Phones

Wow, our new phones arrived in 1 day!

I bet the woman who took my order felt bad because I was REALLY PISSED when she told me the phone I ordered was going to be more money than the person who talked to me 5 minutes before her. I looked at all the other GSM phones and decided I still wanted the 6800. After she placed the order and called me back with the order numbers, final prices after taxes, etc, she appologized for her mistake, confusing my phone with my wife’s. So I got the price I was expecting.

DSL

We’re getting DSL.

Cable is ok, but the upload speed is crap. There’s no static IP option with ComCast, so its time to change.

Getting SpeakEasy.net DSL.

Unfortunately I had to get a phone line that I don’t plan on using very much. SBC is charging us $24 or something a month. Add DSL on top of that and we’re paying more than Comcast, but the static IP, upload speed should make it worth it.

SBC does provide its own DSL service, but Speakeasy’s reputation seems to be better, though SBC’s is cheaper. I’m really torn.

The ironic part is it says in my speakeasy status that Covad is the DSL “vendor” but their prices are even more expensive than Speakeasy’s. Very strange.

Cell Phone

Its time for a new phone, but which one?

I wanted the Siemens SX56 PocketPC phone, but there are not enough rebates for the existing customers (only new customers get the $150 rebate) so I won’t be getting that phone.

Staying with AT&T I’ve narrowed it down to:
Nokia 6800, Nokia 6200, Sony Ericsson T306, Sony Ericsson T616, Sony Ericsson T226.

Reading www.eopinions.com is very funny. People contradicting each other (one person says the battery life is great, the next saying it sucks), commenting on their service (which has very little to do with the phone) and just being silly sometimes.

Any useful opinions/comments? Thanks

Vacation

Finally some time off of work.

However, since I’m so “needed” I was answering emails and receiving phone calls so its not much of a vacation.

I’d really like to get some of the 500 emails in my inbox sorted/replied to/etc so when I go back to work on Monday maybe, just maybe things will be ever so slightly “normal” or maybe less stressful. Not bloodly likely though.

Time to catch up on stuff around the house (maybe). Very beautiful today, an “indian summer” of sorts having this warm weather in October after some rather cold weather at the end of September. I really need to cut the lawn, but the lawn mower is broken! Hopefully the neighbors will loan me theirs.