Running the gamut between fixing the computer and installing a toilet.
An article in today’s NY Times about the lack of comprehensive digital archives (due to expense) reminded me that I’m behind on my job of ripping all 400+ or our music CD’s.
We probably have 10% already residing on our various music directories, now I have to do the rest. It’s March 11th. We’ll see how long it takes me.
We’ve got squirrels in the attic.
They make a significant amount of noise and have tramped down 50% of the insulation. I promised Jenn that I would attempt non-lethal methods of squirrel-disposal before resorting to poison, traps, or guns. Three weeks ago I acquired a Havahart trap, and two weeks ago I placed said trap in the attic with peanut butter as bait.
Nothing…
…until last night! I got home to some rather loud scratching and thumping noises coming from overhead.
I took the little bugger down, trap and all, and drove him/her 5 miles away for release. The funny thing was, once I released it, it ran straight for the large building 100 yards away, and not the tree 10 feet from it. Hmmm…
The trap is re-baited and sitting in the same spot. We’ll see if we get another one. Eventually, I’ll have to spend a weekend placing firring strips and mesh around where you see the yellow insulation to keep them out.
Title says it all.
Ouch
Ouch
Ouch
*******
22:00 Update:
I’m usually a proponent of “green” outdoor chemicals, but not with bees/wasps/yellowjackets. I Raided their ass about an hour ago.
No, Google is not making ketchup. They’ve “recently” released a 3D modeling package for free download (with a licensed option for commerical use). It is an easy, intutitive modeler that allows you to quickly build three dimensional models of buildings and rooms. At least, that’s as far as I’ve gotten with it. It is not a true 3D modeler in the sense of ProEngineer or Unigraphics, but it will let you build a house or an apartment room or a building to scale. To see some examples, go to the 3D Warehouse.
This seems like the perfect thing to use to design our downstairs renovation. At least, to get an idea for it. I don’t think it will drill down to the depth of placing fixtures and plumbing and electrical lines. But, I won’t have to do all the work on paper, or with Microstation CAD software at work!
I believe that this software was mentioned to me previously by fraudirector and mdsteele47. Yay them!
Getting Things Done, a.k.a. GTD, is a self-help book written by David Allen for people who want to get their lives (not professional or personal, but the whole shebang) under organizational control.
I confess that when Jenn first brought this book home I was skeptical. Well, “skeptical” might be a bit of an understatement. “Deriding” or “pooh-poohing” might be better terms. I’ve never been a big fan of the vast panoply of executive self-help books. I’ve read a few and listened to those lectures on tape you get concerning productivity and networking, etc., and generally found them to be, well, general. They are usually full of the “I’m freaking awesome at what I do, so I wrote a book about it because it must be the best way possible to do it!” kind of stuff, totally ignoring the fact that people who aren’t good at what they do rarely write books about it. Selection bias at its best. Suffice to say, I don’t buy very many of those books (or tapes).
However, GTD is not of the above genre of unhelpful self-help books. David Allen does fall into the category of person whom I feel does not relax nearly enough, but the book and it’s recommendations are implementable at home and at work by Non-Type-A people who seek to be organized but just need a system. This system, in my own experience, isn’t so crazy as a lot of different “organizational schemes” I’ve seen in the past. It is a logical extension of processes I was already using, but were not quite covering all the bases.
So, I recommend the book, and the GTD process. I didn’t have to make any additional investments in software or hardware to get things running. I followed some of David Allen’s recommendations regarding organizational stuff such as file folders (a lot) and a labelmaker (which I love, now), but my total outlay was only like $75 to get going (at home. Work obviously provided the materials I needed there).
4 June 06 22:05 edit. The first comment below reminded me that I forgot to link to what got me from pooh-poohing this book to actually reading it. Check out this organization!
I guess I’m feeling strangely verbose today. Already this morning, I’ve posted two non-trivial comments over at Live Journal, which are locked to friends only (so sad); I’ve responded to several workish emails in greater-than-two-word-sentences; I cruelly insisted on discussing (at least attempting to discuss) day plans with my wife while she was sleepily lying face down on her pillow making little tiny noises which—roughly translated—meant “fuck off”; and now I’m placing an unusual amount of text on my own blog.
How odd.
This is why I love the internet. 15 Years ago, if I were trying to hack my computer, I’d have to dig out a DOS manual or call a friend who knew more than me. Now, I can just query Herr Google.
Thusly, I find this wonderful website, http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml which has free-for-download boot floppies all ready to go. Just copy them to the a: drive and you’re off!
Well, after I did that, I discovered that I was still going to have to make some boot floppies for FreeBSD itself. The adventure continues!
I guess, given that it’s 2005, I can’t really call it an experiment, but it’s new to me, therefore experimental.
We recently purchased a new computer to replace our 1998 vintage Gateway (AMD K6) and I decided that what I needed was another project. The project is to install FreeBSD onto the Gateway and use it as an experimental computer for webhosting, running GIMPS, and anything else that might occur to me.
The first step, of course, was to cleanse the computer of all vestiges of Windows 98 and install FreeBSD. A friend recommended I check the bios to ensure that I could boot from the CD drive before I shredded the hard drive. I dutifully checked and it seemed that it would be possible. So, off I went, using a freeware program to overwrite the 4 GB hard drive and then plugged in the recently-burned FreeBSD boot CD-ROM and turned the computer back on.
Nada.
Oops. Seems that I can’t boot from the CD ROM after all.
Well, now I get to have fun creating a boot disk for the a: drive with the appropriate CD drivers to run the FreeBSD software. I’ve got a panasonic 24x drive, who’s various serial numbers are currently buried inside the box. I’m going to try using some default software before I dig the drive back out and look for specific information. Stay tuned!
Conveniently, of course, I’ve got a working computer sitting next to my wiped computer, enabling me to mine the internet for tips. This is so much easier than in 1990 when I was hacking my old MS-DOS based computer.