The Daily Diversion Archive, February, 2001

2/23/01

I should call this the weekly Diversion.

I've been busy with the usual old crap lately. I've been chasing around doing a bunch of important stuff and now I'm sitting here at my desk and not feeling very creative. I've posted quite a few "wins" lately, but what I really want is to get back on my motorcycle. I have a ton of plans for the garage and boat, but I'm rather disinclined to go out to the garage when it's below freezing outside. I simply MUST get some time to take care of these things.

Entropy has paid our vehicles a visit lately. The T-Bird's passenger door no longer opens. This is a pain as this is the vehicle we take when the both of us are going somewhere. I guess this gives me a reason to fix the power door lock on that side. I can take care of both issues when I'm tearing the door apart to fix the latch. Boy, if there's one thing I love, it's mucking around inside a car door that's stuck shut. The only thing that would be better is to follow it with a salt rub.

I got some good news the other day. My friend Sam has run off to Vegas to marry her beau. I got the news kinda late, but that's OK. She emailed me a note saying that not only had she gotten married, but that she's pregnant as well. Wow. Congratulations to you, Sam! Sarah and I wish you all the best. Drop us a line sometime or give us a yell...

2/20/01

I'm trying to think about anything interesting that happened to me today. I'm having difficulty. I'm not a boring guy, I don't lead a boring life, and yet, it seems that when it comes to writing something, anything remotely interesting in these "daily" columns, I strike out miserably.

Sure, I could prattle on about the various merits of the different Intel 430xx chips or relate the inane behaviors of the street-kooks downtown, but I really don't think that anyone really wants to hear about that. Those chips are ancient history and street-kooks are just one of those things one has to put up with when one lives with concentrated humanity.

Kooky.

What, then, about which should I taelk?

Let us talke about olde englifh. Or not.

Today was a day where the little things combined together to be really freakin' annoying. I got into the truck this morning for the quick trip to work and found that the dome light in my truck had burnt out. It was dark. I turned on the headlights to find the left one still hadn't healed itself, either. When I got downtown, after I had already pulled in to the usual spot in the usual lot, I remembered that it was Presidents' Day and that the street meters were free. My 2 block walk to work was lengthened considerably and made quite a bit more dangerous by flashing 4 way reds at the corner of 5th and Marquette. No walk signals were to be found and traffic was backed up a half-block in the approaching directions. I could just see it: Pedestrian killed on street crossing because he was too caught up in his morning ennui to use the skyway system.

All these notable things have happened before I've even set foot in our building. On the way up to our floor, I remembered that since it was a holiday for bank and government workers, I wouldn't be able to withdraw the money today that I need for tomorrow. Nuts.

Work went smoothly for the most part. I solved a couple of long-standing problems I was having with stuff and that was good. I also was able to get some other things straightened out and that was even better. The end of the day came up quickly and ya just gotta love that. I went back to the parking lot and the annoying attendant who always seems to take his break just as I get halfway to his exit wasn't there and so I didn't have to drive one orbit of the lot to get out. That's nice. I guess that's the problem with being able to recognize patterns. You get to know when people are going to do stuff that makes you mad before they even start to do it. Sometimes it would be nice to not notice these things. I'd probably be much less angry.

Speaking of angry, this has turned into an angryman's special. So be it. Coming soon: How to deal with paranoids.

2/14/01

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO MY LOVELY WIFE, SARAH

It's been 4 years of bliss since she and I eloped. I'd like to thank her for being such a good friend and companion. I love you, Sarah. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

I was meaning to take a look back in time for New Year's, but I just didn't have the time. I really don't now, but I'll try to make a go of it anyway. Four years ago, I was working as the Safety Coordinator of a medium-sized school bus company. It was hard work, the hours were long and I really didn't feel that great about having that job as a life-long career. Sarah wasn't working full time and the two of us were just barely getting by on my salary and what ever else she could bring in. We had just bought the house we live in now and although the mortgage payment is low, it was a lot more than I was used to paying when I had borders there. We had just about had it with our debt load and we were in the process of remodeling the kitchen and bathroom. It seemed we just couldn't spend money we didn't have fast enough.

I was driving a crappy, old truck that a friend had given to me a year earlier. I felt fortunate to have it--it was very reliable and it really was nice to not have car payments begging for cash when we didn't have quite enough to begin with. Sarah was driving a car she'd bought many years earlier and it was getting on towards the end of its life. I found myself working on it about every third weekend changing the endless parade of alternators, radiator hoses and various other gremlins.

I'd mentioned the remodeling project earlier. Four years ago, our kitchen was a vision of late '70s putrescence. From the avocado linoleum floors, to the pale green refrigerator to the pine- stained-cherry cupboards to the single, ceiling light fixture, it was a textbook example of just how wrong the late '70s were. The kitchen was dark and that wasn't helped by the fact one of the two windows had been largely covered over by a countertop and some decorative trim under the bottom of the overhanging cupboards. There was more storage in the kitchen then, but it was filled with the stuff left behind from when my Mom's drunk-ass ex-boyfriend lived there.

Angst-ridden rhetorical questions of the day: Just how many orphaned plastic container lids does a person need? Enough to fill a drawer? Enough to fill a cupboard? It turns out that we had nearly enough to fill a dumpster. An exaggeration, sure, but we did end up throwing out more than just the old roof when we rented that dumpster.

I digress. Anyway, the house was soon to be purged, the bills were soon to be paid, the new careers were soon to be launched, and we got married. Since then there's been a whole lot of changes made and nearly all for the better. I look forward to the day when the money we make no longer goes to the Man, but goes to sticking it to the Man instead. I look forward to weekend jaunts, vacations abroad, pleasant evenings spent at home out on the balcony, Sunday mornings spent reading the paper on the front porch and all kinds of other fun. Fun and good times spent with the woman I love.

Happy anniversary, Sarah. I love you.

2/8/01

I was out sick today. I have the mega-cold that is going around. My wife was as sick as all get out for most of this week and then I came down with it today. It's a hefty thing that has plugged my head up but good and periodically makes it impossible for me to do anything but stare straight ahead and drool. I didn't feel up to going to work, so I stayed home. I tried to get some stuff done from here, but my machine at work conked and with it went my remote connection to it. So much for technology.

I bought yet another motherboard last night. It's an old socket 7 board made by EFA and the only reason I got it was because it has the 430HX chip in it. The model number is P55T2SPIO and it doesn't have the optional built-in sound card. It has a tag-ram chip and so it will do what no other Intel 430 chipped motherboard will do: cache more than 64Mb of RAM. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any DIMM slots on it so I can't take advantage of dirt-cheap RAM. SIMMS are cheaper now than they've ever been, but they're still nowhere near as cheap as DIMMS. The next thing to acquire is a Pentium 200 MMX chip as that's the maximum rated for this board. I'll post a review when I have it up and running.

I must also say that I really don't like shoveling and plowing the walks with a rude cold. It makes a pretty darned unpleasant job, ten times worse.

Well it seems that I'm incapable of doing anything but complaining tonight, so I'll sign off for now.

2/7/01

I'm pretty upset today. I just incurred a needless bill that could have been avoided. Boy, I hate it when I bounce checks. The thing that really kills me is the fee for this little mistake. Would you believe $28.00? That's right, folks. Twenty-eight flippin' dollars for a $9.00 error. What a bunch of shit. The bank? TCF. The fee is just as high at the other banks around town.

Let's get some perspective here. $28.00 is 2 hours of labor for someone making $14.00/hour. Does anyone out there think that an overdraft causes this bank or any other even .5 seconds of extra labor? I will admit that I went to the teller to double check my suspicions, so I guess that billing me for the less-than-five minutes of teller time would be fair. Considering the teller was probably making eleven dollars an hour, I probably cost the bank about 80 cents of labor plus the fraction of a cent for the paper and ink used in the mini-printout that I didn't ask for.

The bank did cover the check. That was nice, but for $28.00, I expect perhaps a phone call or perhaps a nice back rub and a pep talk to keep me from a fit of rage at my own stupidity. Was it my fault? Undoubtedly. What I don't get is that in the space of about 11 years, overdraft fees have gone from $9.00 to $28.00. Has the cost of banking gone up that high? I doubt it. I guess I just don't understand the utility of an obviously retributive, humiliating, kick in the crotch penalty such as this for an honest mistake.

Let's hear it for TCF and their corporate greed. TCF, you suck. It's policies like this that make me wonder why I've been with this bank for since the late 1980s. It's time to move the checking account to the credit union.

1/30/01

We had a massive ice storm here yesterday. It wasn't raining ice, it was just raining. It was a hard rain--the kind that happens very often in the month of April. Yet, here we are in late January getting rained on. For those of you who aren't blessed to live in areas where it's cold, let me tell you why I'm not happy about rain in January.

Rain this time of year makes it very hard to get around. Probably the biggest problem is getting your car unlocked in the morning. The rain seeps into the keyway and freezes the tumblers solid. Rain also can form a seal between two surfaces. Surfaces like your car's door and its body. It's happened before that I've used boiling water to get into my car on the day after an ice storm. Did I mention that cars can freeze to the ground? Well, they can. Big icicles form on the bumpers, mud flaps, and around the tires. This can immobilize a car. If you get into a car after an ice storm and the car's suspension doesn't give an inch, you're in big trouble.

Getting around on foot is disastrous as well and this is the reason I bring this whole slippery subject up. I fell not once, but twice on the way to the truck last night. The first fall was merely embarrassing. I ended up on my ass on a particularly slippery stretch of sidewalk. The second fall was an all-out flying "W" yard-sale wherein I pitched my bag into the street, my glasses flew 25' down the sidewalk and I didn't get up for a couple of counts. I had the good grace to get up and take a bow to nobody in particular and proceed to round up my things. My bag was wet, but my gear (cellphone, Visor etc...) was OK. My glasses didn't fare as well being bent to hell and having a chipped lens, but I'm replacing the lenses soon, so I don't care too much. Body-wise I'm finding new and interesting muscles making their objection to my little incident known. It's amazing that I wasn't terribly sore right away and now I'm nearly crippled. God, I hate getting old.

To sum up the rest of the bad things about ice storms, trees break, power lines go down, there's zillions of fender-benders because nobody gives a shit to change their driving tactics, and you can get stuck on a flat street. Traffic snarls, you can't stop once you get started and life pretty much grinds to a slow creep. Ice belongs in a drink, not falling from the sky in January.

In other news, I find I have to thank the search engine Google for being so damn good. I've found a wealth of information on my old, decrepit 486 laptop on Google and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for having an excellent search engine. I have assembled quite a bit of information on my laptop and when I finally get Linux to the point where I no longer need to fool with it as much, I'll post a page somewhere else on this site with the latest BIOS, description and other information I've been able to assemble. I'll also cross-post this info to the Linux On Laptops site. They too have been a wealth of information.

In another, much more depressing note, I'd like to express my condolences to the family of Shawn Mikel Pratt. I believe this is the same Shawn Pratt that drive school buses for me in 1995 for Schoolway. He was killed as a passenger of a car that skidded out of control on I-35W back on January 9, 2001. He was a good guy and shouldn't have had to die at 32. Stay cool, dude.

1/27/01

Saturday Special

I seem to be waxing technical lately and to my casual readers, I apologize. I write what I am at most times and I've been a major hardware geek lately. It seems lately if I'm not out hunting for hardware or sticking it together, I'm noodling with my various boxes in the (mostly) vain hope of adding functionality to them or getting them to do something the way I want them to do it. This has left most "creative" endeavors out in the cold. I'm trying to think of something "creative" to write, but that particular well has been dry for about 6 months. This is how it goes, sometimes...

Come to think of it, I've really not done much outside the technical realm in a good long while. My wife's parents and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art while they were here, but that was nearly a month ago. Two nights ago I went to see The Deadly Nightshade Family Singers at the Cedar Cultural Center. They're a folk sort of group and my wife's friend's husband plays accordion in the band. He's very good at it and they were a lot of fun to see.

A few nights previous, my wife and I went over to that same couple's house to their 12th Night party. We were asked to bring a copy of the Shakespeare play 12th Night because we were getting together to read it together. What a great idea for a party. Since the husband is a technical sort as well, I figured I wasn't going to be the only one there with 12th Night downloaded on my PDA. It turns out I was. It worked out pretty well. I do a lot of my reading off my Visor, so reading the play (and my parts in it) wasn't too much of a problem. A larger screen would have been nice, but then I wouldn't have been able to afford it to begin with. So there you go.

I didn't intend to be alpha geek there, so I showed anyone interested how I did it and got on with reading the play from it. It was cool.

It's good I sat down to write this, as it's shown me that I won't emerge from my tech-absorbed fugue-state 6 months down the line with pasty skin and the startling realization that Bush Jr. is president. I AM in touch. I'm NOT solely a geek. I HAVE a life--even though it seems that I don't sometimes.

Sorry for the crappy Daily. More crap to come.

1/18/01

I keep forgetting how snarled traffic is around here. It seems in order to go east-west in this metro area during rush hour, one should forget about getting anywhere. Yep, if you're in a hurry, you're going to be disappointed. I had to go back AGAIN to the computer parts place across town to return the mobo of last night's frustration, and getting there may have been faster if I'd have walked.

I needn't have hurried, either. They were fresh out of suitable boards. They had about 5 last Thursday, 3 yesterday and Jack Squat today. Nuts. I had to settle for store credit as there was exactly zero there I wanted to buy.

These junk shops kill me, really. My favorite, located on the outskirts of downtown here in Minneapolis, has an abundance of 486 era stuff. Literally piles of old mobos, token ring network cards, and hard disk drives of less than 250Mb lay in somewhat neat piles. Prices are really good for the old stuff. Anything remotely modern is priced about 33% too high. Example: I could buy a Pentium 233MMX chip there for $58.00. I could buy it OEM brand new from a certain online vendor I use frequently for $42.00. Even with shipping, it's still about ten bucks cheaper. Yet, this place offers up deals galore on stuff that's just a bit out of the ordinary. The dual Pentium Pro mobo came from here. I routinely see that very board selling on Ebay for twice what I paid for it at this shop.

The place I went to last night deals mostly in bodged-together second-hand systems and old software. The place looks as if it doesn't sell much and is probably hanging together on the markup of their cutting edge components. This was the first place I saw the gigabyte Athlon chip on display. They wanted ridiculous money for it, but the guy behind the counter said they'd sold about a dozen. Go figure. The place has about a dozen chest-high display racks full of software and games I've never heard of. Do you want the '97 edition of Grolier's Encyclopedia? They've got a boxed copy. Do you want a CD-ROM of 10,000 Canadian business phone numbers from 1986? They've got 6 copies. Do you think they sell any of these things? They probably sell one a year to somebody in the throes of a manic episode who's fixated on Canadian telephone numbers.

My second favorite computer junkshop is a local chain that's just across the road from the home of broken motherboards. This place is a place that usually has no deals. Sure, you might find something marked down to move, but usually there's not much there. If you want to buy a Celeron system in a used box with a 90 day warranty for about $300.00 more than it's worth, this is the place you're looking for. I went there a couple of times after it opened and was disgusted at the price they were selling stuff. I understand you have to cover your overhead, but these prices were nearly outrageous. I left empty-handed and shaking my head both times.

Fast forward two years to the present time and the place still is markup heaven. However, the sales staff and pricing people have forgotten about what old stuff is worth and are focusing on the latest and brightest. I went there last May and for $20.00 bought a TX chip motherboard that ran Windows 2000 just fine with a Pentium 233 MMX chip. Score one for me.

I went there again this fall and bought a case for a computer I was building for my stepmom. For $15.00, I got a case that still contained a 386SX mobo and chip. It also contained a functioning 250Mb HDD AND a 10 Megabit network card. It also included a full complement of internal cable spaghetti and, contrary to the sticker on the outside of the box, a functioning power supply. Score two for me.

I went there again last week to see if they had any cases for yet another machine I'm building for a friend. Yep, they sure did. The case says 486 XEON on it, but what I really liked was the $5.00 price tag. I've since looked inside it and I may just keep it for myself. It's made out of doomsday-thick steel and has drive bays flippin' everywhere. I counted 6 full width bays and 2 3 1/2" ones. This was one no-messing-around desktop machine. It has a second fan installed behind the ISA slots and there's a unboltable tray the motherboard sits on. The only snag here is that my old 430FX chip board is a bit small for the tray. No matter.

The real score of that visit is the old laptop I bought. I've been wanting a laptop for a while now. It seems that everyone has one but me and I can think of literally hundreds of uses for one. Well, strike that. I can think of 2 uses. Anyway, sitting in the glass case on it's side is this buff colored case that has this tag on it. $20.00, no OS. Okay. The salesdude shows me that it will post with a floppy and that's really all I needed to know. I figured that for $20.00, it would be worth it just to see what the inside of a laptop looked like. Then I find out that for that price it comes with a power supply AND a port replicator. $25 and tax and I'm the proud owner of a Toshiba T2400CS laptop. It was once owned by a pilot who was training to fly some kind of small SAAB jet. The thing was full of flight logs and nudie pictures an other stuff. The reason I know this was that I took it home and despite the sticker IT BOOTED RIGHT UP! Score 3 for me.

What makes me really happy is that similar critters to this thing sell for better than $100.00 on Ebay. Cool. It isn't going to set the world on fire with it's speed. It's a 486 DX2/50Mhz running Win95. Most people hate ol'95, but I like it better than its successors. It's small, it runs fast on old and slow stuff, and it's reasonably stable if you don't kick it too hard. That said, it still is a M$ product and that's not so good, but for this machine it's certainly adequate. I think I'll be seeing Linux on it soon enough, but I have some things to get for it first.

It's dying for a network card. Done. It needs a battery. I found one of unknown properties on (where else) Ebay, cheap. Done. It has a SCSI port hanging out the back of it. I think I'm going to be picking up a cheapo, external SCSI CD-ROM drive so I can do installs on it. That's going to be hard to find, but I should have one around here, anyway.

It's fun to get toys and beat up on retailers. Hooray for ME!

1/17/01

Today after work I went to the computer junk shop to return a motherboard that wasn't working. No big deal, really. I installed it and it didn't post. I wasn't surprised as I paid not a whole lot for it, and it didn't even come with a coin-cell battery. Anyway, I drove across town to this place and talked to the fellow behind the counter. It's funny: Sales guys always try to talk "techese" to me and I end up correcting them. We looked around at the piles of Socket 7 motherboards and finally found a promising looking one.

I'm not looking for a world-beater. I'm just looking for a solid board with DIMM slots, MMX processor support and an AT form factor. I just happen to need a development machine and I just happen to have a small AT mini-tower. We talked at length about the various strengths and weaknesses of the Intel 430 chipsets and we finally do a straight-up trade for a board with a VIA chipset. It's an early one, but that's OK. I can deal with some limitations. This board is only going into a development box.

So I get it home and get to installing it. I'd hurt my hand this morning jamming it into the door of my truck after slipping on an ice-covered street. This made my installation efforts extra-specially fun. After getting the board in and connected, I powered up.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

Not good.

I played around with various memory formats and finally got it to post. It stops short of booting saying that there's no keyboard attached. Funny, I have a keyboard cord hanging out the back of the thing. I wiggle it and sure enough, it's loose--but it's loose in a way that shoving the plug in further isn't going to help.

Nuts.

After uninstalling the board, lo and behold, there before me is a couple of broken pins between the plug module and the motherboard. I figured I could fix it as I'm pretty handy with a soldering gun, but that's not going to happen with a sore hand.

Double nuts.

Looks like I'll be driving across town tomorrow as well.

1/14/00

Against my better judgment, I watched a piece of history today. I saw the single biggest playoff rout in the history of the NFL. The thoroughly putrid Minnesota Vikings defiled themselves against a team they should have beaten. Instead, they posted what might go down in history as the most feeble effort ever shown by a professional football team. It wasn't even close. I turned it on just a few minutes into the game and it was already 14-0. The Giants, doing everything right, did nothing but reverse the one and the four for the rest of the game.

What else can be said? What excuses can be made? How can you justify getting paid to lose 41-0?

I guess I just don't want to hear the excuses. This team is broken. Fix it!

Here are some observations:

It didn't look as if the offensive line showed up: Culpepper didn't have time to pass and Smith didn't get any holes to run through. The Vikings' offensive line are their own worst enemy most of the time. Every game this whole season there are at least a couple of series that go nowhere but backwards. First down: penalty and loss of yards. First down: incomplete pass. Second down: penalty and loss of down. Third down:sack. Add in at least 20 yards a game in false starts, head slaps and holds and you have a whopping good time. Repeat until you turn off the TV in frustration. The offensive line can't seem to get the count right and when they do, it's been anticipated so well by most defensive units they just run around the end. Offensive line verdict: Hopeless--cut them all.

The offensive backfield is good. Notice I said good and not great. Yes, Moss is the most feared receiver in the league. He still needs work. Smith is gold. Culpepper has many good years ahead of him. Carter should last another year. Verdict: Keepers, but they all (except Smith) need to show up for each game.

The defense is just not good. There was once a Viking defense that could stop teams from moving the ball. Apart from a couple of well respected stars, everyone else needs to find other lines of work. This year, the Vikings' secondary has given a 16 week clinic on how not to tackle. I'll never forget the dozens of times a member of the secondary hit a runner hard, but with closed arms. What ended up happening most of the time was the runner just bounced off and continued running. Stuff like that is not only cheap, but truly bad football. Verdict: Keep Griffith for 2 years and Randle for one. Can everyone else. What good are guys that don't finish tackles?

Then there's the question of the coaching staff. I'm not saying that Dennis Green is a bad coach. His record proves him to be a much better than average coach. What I will say is that a performance like today's might not happen to a truly great coach. Verdict: When his contract is up, he's gone. Don't worry folks, he signed an extension this year and he'll be around for a couple more years. I reserve my right to change my opinion on the man, but for now, my recommendation stands.

Today's game will go down in history as one of the truly great slaughters of all-time. More silly than running the wrong way for a touchdown is getting to the playoffs on your offence and then not scoring point one in the game before the Super Bowl. More humiliating than losing 4 Super Bowl appearances is not showing up for a game this close to the Super Bowl. This game will not be remembered as the game the Giants piled on the points to further humiliate the Vikes. No, this game will be remembered for a good team coming into a playoff game and being so completely and competently dominated that nobody even accused the Giants of running up the score. There's nothing to be mad at the Giants about. We weren't beaten by a fluke play or a last-minute score. We weren't beaten by the refs on a bad call or by a play or player that we couldn't stop. We were beaten by ourselves and the Giants had the good graces not to rub our noses in it.

Boy, did the Vikings stink today.

1/9/01

Out sick with the flu today. It's annoying. It's one of those flues that lets you feel halfway normal one minute and completely dreadful the next. I was going to go to work today, but I realized the day's journey to work was a no-go when I got the cold sweats in a hot shower.

Neat trick, huh?

Anyway, I'm working on the site in fits and starts today. I work as long as I can, then I leave it alone for a while. My back is riot with body-aches and the knuckles in my fingers hurt, so I can't work terribly long at any sitting. Blah.

1/5/01

It's a new year and it's time to post a new Daily. So I go...

The Christmas season is finally over for another year. I've eaten my lutefisk and lefse, done my last-minute shopping, been totally wowed that someone bothered to give me some cool stuff, and have obsessed over computer stuff.

My mother and father-in-law were staying with us for a couple of weeks this holiday season and their company was greatly enjoyed. We had a great time at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and at the Hennepin County History Museum. We ate French meat pies from Our Lady Of Lourdes Catholic Church, went to the Modern in Northeast and did all sorts of other cool things. I hope we didn't wear them out going to all the parties and whatnot.

I also have a new niece to tell folks about. Baby Sidney is now in the world and we're happy to have her. Mom and baby are doing fine.

Yes, I should also mention that I'm hosting this site at my house from now on. I did it because I wasn't terribly happy with the free hosting sites out there and I wasn't all that happy about having to pay $20/mo to host. I couldn't decide if I wanted to do Front Page extensions, I couldn't decide on what software to run, I was basically without a clue. It's been a long time coming, but I found that clue and I've grabbed on hard. Give me some feedback on the performance of the server, if you would.