Category Archives: geekspeak

site-related techspeak, computer crap, other technical garble not of interest to the general populace.

geekspeak 4 Comments

Thank you, Sheryl!

Ye Olde Frankenstein PC is back up and running, thanks to a working power supply donated by Sheryl. I installed the new power supply with little to no difficulty, and was delighted to hear that lovely little “beep” when I hit the power button. Then I spent even longer hooking up the PC to my little network of crap (gotta make sure the Mac is all finished being connected before cramming the PC under the desk, which means hooking up the external CD burner and the monitor switchbox, gotta feed both PC and Mac keyboard cables through and figure out where they live when not in use, etc, etc). Then I got to pick up where I left off back in freakin’ January when my computer had its little blowout, which was figuring out why Norton LiveUpdate wouldn’t update my virus defs. Amongst all those things, I spent all evening with my computer and didn’t even get the stuff done that I wanted to do with it (time-sensitive alumni web page updates).

So, now that I’ve downloaded a nice LJ client for my PC, and updating my personal page is no longer a chore, the question arises: do I keep blogging on LJ, or do I return to manually updating the.details? I intend to do some updates to it, anyway: changing the header graphic and menu system, adding a few sections (like gardening… I’m a dork), maybe even changing the color palette (oh the horror!). Can I get some feedback from my loyal readership? Blog here, or blog there?

It’s way past my bedtime. Lemme know what y’all think.

P.S. – Amy’s coming to visit this weekend! Schnarf!
P.P.S. – How I’ve missed having a speedy computer. I like my Mac, but I also like not having to wait for shit to load.

house, site-related

T-minus four days and counting

We have almost everything packed, the U-Haul is reserved, and Aaron’s picking up the key to the house on Friday. Time to let everybody know The Moving Day Schedule.

9:00am – Aaron picks up the U-Haul
9:30am – Moving commences as fellow movers arrive
after loading – Aaron and Diana take the crew out to lunch at Easystreet (our treat)
after lunch – Return to Grove Street and line up vehicles for the Schnuth Caravan up to Toledo
upon arrival – Unload at 4651 Ventura

Unfortunately, we’re not positive what time the whole operation will be over, but we’re guessing sometime in the mid- to late afternoon. So far, the moving crew looks like myself and Aaron, Kris Fries (and possibly his wife Kathy), Kris Heath, Mark Sheets, and Eric Fertel. Jason Garza may be making an appearance after lunch.

I’m kind of frustrated that I don’t have Dreamweaver for my Mac, and/or that I haven’t gotten myself a new power supply for the other computer yet. I have grand ideas for a slight redesign of “the details” page, but it would require that great search-and-replace function in Dreamweaver, so I wouldn’t have to open up every damn file in the whole site and see what styles everything was set at. For the web geeks: yes, I do have stylesheets set up, and yes, they are a linked file and not individually applied within the page. Yes, I will pretty much just be writing a new stylesheet and making new graphics. Still, though, I have become a creature of habit and I prefer my WYSIWYG program to hardcoding, despite the fact that I once prided myself on my ability to code HTML. (That was long before the days of Dreamweaver and its Adobe analog, however, back when WYSIWYG programs were awkward and clunky and required code-tweaking, anyway, to output properly.)

Anyway, as much as I enjoy my LiveJournal, I think I’m going to begin updating my actual page again, as soon as the PC is back up. I may keep the blog section on LJ, and just add updates to the page, though. I’m looking at, first, a new and cleaner design. Second, I’ll be updating long-unused sections, like the Reviews, Photos and Bio. Third, I’ll be adding new sections, like an Atkins Diet factsheet with reviews of low-carb foods and links to Schnuth-approved recipes.

All this… as soon as I get myself a new power supply.

geekspeak 2 Comments

LiveJournal can be a damn pain.

So, let me share with you the epic saga of today’s LJ post. I’ve been using my Mac today, since my PC is still incommunicado. After finishing up reformatting and reconfiguring everything to work for me for the time being, I attempted to open a browser window and post all about it to my LJ. O silly me, thinking it could be just that simple.

No, LiveJournal decided to refresh the webpage after me entering a few sentences of text… then again after I tried to re-enter about half a sentence. So I said, fuck it. I’m downloading one of those clients for my Mac. No biggie. Downloaded the Phoenix client, which is the only one that works with “Classic Macs” (that is, pre- OS X). It’s a StuffIt file, of course… but my version of StuffIt Expander apparently won’t recognize it, for whatever bizarre reason.

So, off I go to locate the latest version of StuffIt Expander that will work with OS 8.x, and I discover that my version is about three version numbers outdated. (Yikes.) I download version 7.whatever, which takes 20 minutes for a 9MB file. *sigh*

After a few restarts—and discovering that my Mac freezes after it’s been asleep—I’ve finally installed the new StuffIt, unstuffed the Phoenix LJ client, located the folder in which it was expanded (hiding under a window on the desktop), and fired this bad boy up.

As much as I hate to admit it, I may just have to rework my personal webpage to incorporate LJ as my main blog. This is kind of spiffy. Of course, that’s assuming I ever either a.) get my PC to power up again, and/or b.) get a copy of Dreamweaver for my Mac and just edit my site from the 6500.

I’m glad I have two passable computers for just this reason. I do still use Aaron’s computer for some things, but having my own that I can tinker with makes me happy. —Hmm. I mean, one that I can tinker with that *does* what I want it to do. And powers up. And doesn’t die in the middle of an icestorm. And doesn’t make me sad. And doesn’t make me whore out to my friends for tech support. Which I don’t want to do. Which makes me want to fix it myself. Which makes me more frustrated. Et cetera.

Aaron and I bought a digital camera off of a coworker of his for 75 bucks. It’s a Fuji FinePix 2400, with 2.1 megapixels of digital goodness. The max resolution is 1600×1200, or somewhere around there. Not bad. If my Mac had USB, I could hook it up and download pics to the 6500. As it is, we can hook it up to Aaron’s Dell and have XP automatically recognize it as new hardware, which is keen. Sure, it’s a little outdated, but it’s just what we wanted in a digital camera. We can take photos for the web and for eBay, and take it on trips to have a point-and-shoot along.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. We went to see our realtor on Saturday afternoon. She seems really nice, and we’re going to go check out houses next Saturday. w00t.

Wish me luck with the PC. I don’t know what to do with it, besides spring for a new freaking power supply and hope that’s the problem. Any advice would be cheerfully accepted (without directly propositioning anyone to help). Peace out.

geekspeak

I love my job… right.

My boss kind of pissed me off today. Me and my coworker both.

See, last week, my boss Tom was on vacation. My coworker Deb and I ended up having a question about the databases we work with, and since Tom wasn’t available, we asked the database guru, Rick. We’d only met him once or twice, in the company of Tom, but we knew he was the programming guy mainly responsible for the CIP (Client Information Program) database.

Turns out that Rick is so much better at explaining things that Tom is. Tom has been known to talk around a subject for 15 minutes and leave you no clearer on the subject. Rick, however, not only explained the process of updating the database, but also brought us back to his area and showed us the SQL databases that are the meat and potatoes of the front-end we work with.

So, naturally, when we came up with a few questions today, even though our immediate supervisor had returned from his vacation, we opted to ask the guy that we knew could answer our questions succinctly and thoroughly. We didn’t even consider asking Tom, because we doubted he’d be able to help. Turns out, though, that Tom came to get us for our Friday meeting as Rick was leaving from discussing our database issues. Of course, Tom asked why Rick was in our office, and then made sure to tell us as we were entering our meeting, “In the future, when you have questions, make sure you ask me first.”

OK, will do… next time I want a completely unsubstantiated answer.

I liken the situation to asking a scientific question of your local clergy vs. asking Stephen Hawking. Not that Rick is that much of a genius—he’s just your average forty-something, well-mannered, friendly and intelligent IT guy. But you know what I mean.

Does anybody know what’s wrong with my computer? There’s no fuse that we can find, which is weird. The fuse wouldn’t be on the motherboard, would it? How do I know if my power supply is hosed? Gyarr!

Aaron keeps telling me that enough is wrong with my computer, with it randomly freezing at startup and during normal use, and now this power issue, that maybe I should just pay the damn bench fee somewhere and get it looked at. I think I’d be embarrassed on some level, though… “Yeah, I put in the new motherboard and processor… —I did what? What did I fuck up? Oh, um, I mean, my friend put in the motherboard…”

geekspeak 3 Comments

Damn livejournal…

Silly me, wanting to change to Rich Text mode in the middle of an entry. No, I didn’t want to keep that entry or anything. Gyarr.

So, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted… Where the hell is the goddamn fuse?! I cracked open the computer, and the fuse is not where Aaron said it would be. I can’t seem to find it. Hopefully, he’ll be able to help me locate it this weekend, and we can go buy a new one at Wal-Mart or Ace Hardware or something. I hope it’s not actually the power supply itself, because that would suck. It doesn’t smell like burnt computer, though, so that’s good.

Although I did discover why you’re supposed to keep all the nice plates closing up the back of your computer. 🙂 Lotsa cobwebs. Jinkies.

I read something on CNN.com today which would explain some of my personality quirks. Scientists have found a relationship between teen depression and a small hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for emotion and motivation. It’s possible that adolescent depression could actually shrink the hippocampus, they say. Maybe that would explain my reticence to get up in the morning, eh? —Oh, well. It was a good try, anyway.

And here’s a funny for ya: Maybe your parents or grandparents were involved in social or veterans’ clubs like the VFW, the Federation of Eagles (Fraternal Order of Eagles?), the Moose Lodge, or similar clubs. But have you ever heard of… The Fraternal Order of Orioles?! One of their local “nests” opened an account with Sky recently… which is probably more than I should tell you. Now I have to kill you.