The only good coyote...

...is a dead one. Texan ranchers don't take kindly to coyotes running about their ranches. I found these along a Farm Road near Bertram this past weekend. There were at least 1/2 dozen hanging from this one fence. It's not an uncommon sight around these parts.

: Divorce Song from the album "Exile in Guyville" by Liz Phair

Band of Brothers...

Just finished watching all 10 hours of my Christmas gift. Band of Brothers is now my favorite thing I've got on DVD. I had seen a couple episodes when it first came out on HBO a couple years ago and have been wanting this set for as long as it's been out. The mini-series is based on the real-life story of Easy Company, 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. It is basically a 10 hour version of Saving Private Ryan. It is an unblinking look at WWII. It shows the good and bad of both sides of that conflict. The men who fought in that war are to be respected.

: Am I Awake by They Might be Giants

Christmas goodness...

Had a darn fine Christmas. My wife got me HBO's Band of Brothers on DVD which I've been wanting for a while. I was also given an emergency kit for the Defender, a couple of Eeyore(my favorite Disney character) sweatshirts/jackets, and a Lego set I had been eyeing at DisneyWorld. For my wife it was a veryNightmare Christmas. She got an NBC sweatshirt, ring, necklace, pins, 2 watches, snowglobe, and other things I've probably forgotten. My son was spoiled most of all. Lego, slot cars, K-nex, transformers, books, etc....We gave my parents a Toshiba portable 7"DVD player. Very sweet. I'm actually jealous of that gift.

It was also a very tough Christmas as it's the first one since my uncle died. Things just aren't the same without his laugh in the air.

Owie...

My wrist has been bothering me off-and-on for a few years. I'm pretty sure it's carpal tunnel. I attribute its original injury to one of the sweetest games ever invented, Total Annihilation I spent way too many hours/days/weeks playing that game around '96/'97. Every once in a while it acts ups and gives me problems. The past month has been one of those times. I went to the doc who prescribed Darvocet. It helps a bit. I'm supposed to go see an ortho surgeon hopefully for a Cortizone shot. That should help dramatically. If not it may be time for surgery. Oh boy! Another surgery...

: O Little Twon Of Bethlehem from the album "It's Christmas Time" by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra

Woohoo!

My Christmas shopping is done. What more do I need to say?

: Christmas Melody by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Christmas present to myself...

We've been getting a lot of wind in Austin lately. It's been playing havoc with our fence blowing it down every other day or so. The fence is a 25 year old cedar board fence. It need replacement but we've been putting it off. My cordless drill I use for repairs gave up the ghost so I went to Sears and bought my self a new 19.2 Cordless Combo Kit. Oh, yeah. It came with a cordless drill, cordless reciprocating saw, cordless circular saw, and a flashlight.

Now I'm looking for something to break.

Jebus! It's just rain!

Austinites don't know what to do when it rains. Went by the hospital to visit my grandfather at lunch and it took me 15 minutes to drive 2 miles. People in this town freak out when it rains and forget how to drive. Yeah, there's water coming from the sky. Yeah, I know it's cold. I'm driving a car with no heater. Keep moving.

Another thing, what is it about the rain that makes people rude? People in their cars not getting wet act like they are. I'm the one standing out here in the rain. Would you mind stopping to let me get across the parking lot instead of trying to run me down? I've noticed this phenomenon for years now. People do not let pedestrians cross the street when it rains. I guess they figure they are gonna get wet if they stop.

On the way back I decided to drop into BK for a grab-and-go lunch. There were 12, yes 12, cars in the drive thru. Do you really think you're going to get that wet by walking inside? I parked and walked into an empty restaurant. I gave my order, paid, and was out in under 2 minutes. I think two cars got through in that time. Yeah, that drive-thru is a real time saver.

*Furrfu!*

pain and suffering part II

Took the drive I was trying to format into work yesterday. I dropped a firewire card into a Windows2000 machine. It saw the card just fine. Plug in the the drive and it sees it just fine. Try to format the drive and everything was no longer fine. Turns out MickeySoft intentionally crippled Win2000/XP to not be able to format drives greater than 32GB using FAT32. Nice. Thanks a lot. And, no, I don't want to format it using NTFS thank you very much. Searched all over the lab for a Win98/ME machine to no avail.

I ended up taking it over to my parent's house and doing the format there on my mom's WinME machine. It worked first time no problems...*sigh*

: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from the album "A GRP Christmas Collection" by GRP

pain and suffering...

Bought myself a new toy for my birthday last week, an 80GB External firewire drive. I thought it'd be really easy to hook and and use. My plan was/is to use it to backup my iBook and also store things on it from my Linux boxes. Should be easy right?

OS X and Linux are supposed to be able to read write FAT32. That's the one partition format they both share rw accessibility to. I hooked it up to the Linux box and formatted it as a nice big FAT32 partition. Linux reads/writes no problem. Cool. I write a few files to it and then hook it up to the iBook. "No partition found" it says, "Wanna initialize it?" Um, no, it's already been formatted. Ok, fine. I use the iBook to format it using 'diskutil' to make a MS-DOS partition. Cool. It how shows up as a FAT32 partition that I can read and write to. Move it back over to Linux box and it just stares at me. Shit. I do this for several hours with no success.

I gave up and drug the drive and the firewire card to work today to put in a GameOS box just to format a stinkin' drive. Nice...

: Race Car Ya-Yas from the album "Fashion Nugget" by Cake

A quick thank you...

...to my good friend Mando for the birthday present of an iTMS gift certificate. I shall spend it well on new music for my iPod.

: O Holy Night from the album "The Best of Narada Christmas (" by Brian Mann

Double taxation...

I live in Williamson County, Texas, just north of Austin. It looks like the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority thinks taxing us twice for the same thing is a good idea. What they are proposing is to convert several highways in the area to toll roads. I have no problem with toll roads. I do have a problem with having to pay to drive on a road I have already paid for with my taxes. If they want to fund a road with tolls, fine. On new roads.

This organization is starting the fight to get CTRMA to pull their heads out of their asses.

: I'm Cryin' from the album "Texas Flood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble

Happy Birfday to me!

Yup, i've managed to reach almost a 1/3 of a century. Huh, who woulda thunk I'd last this long. Normally I'd celebrate it like I have every year since moving to Texas. A visit to one of my favorite places to hang out, Wimberly Glass Works. We aren't going this year because they've moved their yearly 'irregular' sale until January, after I talked to Tim, the owner, who said they weren't going to do that. I was rather upset. I've looked forward to my birthday every year since we've been here for that sale. We have been the first people in line for about 3 or 4 years now, showing up 2 hours or more before the doors opened. Just hanging out in what always seems to be freezing weather and talking to Tim about his year was a highlight. We'd hit the sale, then Wimberly Market Days, and for lunch we'd hit my favorite place in CenTex, The Saltlick for all-you-can-eat BBQ. We'll still be goin' down to The Saltlick but we'll skip WGW until next month I guess.

I've already gotten most of my presents from my family and myself. I bought myself an external firewire drive to backup my iBook quickly and easily. My wife gave me some John Cusak DVDs and my son gave me a figurine named 'Father and Son'. My sister gave me a giant LEGO minifig for my desk at work. The biggie and the one gift I've wanted for a long time but would never buy myself was from my parents. They gave me a poker chip set. Real clay poker chips, 11 gram weight, exactly like are used in Vegas. They feel so good in the hands and make and oh-so-satisfying clink when thrown in the pot. I guess it's time to start up Saturday night poker games again.

I'm gonna head to bed to sleep in as late as I want. In the morning, or afternoon depending on how late I sleep, I'll probably finish decorating the house for Christmas before we head out to dinner.

: Stille Nacht from the album "Christmas" by Mannheim Steamroller

All legal again...

I took my Texas CHL renewal course last night. I passed of course. I shot a, for me, disappointing 248 out of 250 on the shooting test. I should never have dropped those two shots low and left by an inch. I know why it happened and won't let it happen again. I also did 96% on the written. Not too shabby I guess but I feel I should have aced it also.

If you are considering getting a CHL and live in the Austin area I greatly recommend Ross Bransford as an instructor. I've used him every time and he is a great teacher. He intersperses his own life experiences into the class. He really knows his stuff. He made the 5 hour renewal course fly by.

: Carol of the Bells from the album "A Fresh Aire Christmas" by Mannheim Steamroller

Indian support...

*sigh* Just got done canceling my 45 day free trial of AOhelL. I signed up so I'd have access when we were in Orlando last month. I never used it because my iBook died the first day. The person I was talking to was obviously in India. I could hardly understand the guy. Yeah, he did his job just fine and I'm sure they all can. But, geez, it'd be nice to talk to someone who's first language is English for a change.

Ok, Apple support, who I talked to last week, was a guy in Sacramento, CA. I'll give Apple credit where it's due. They don't seem to have sold out. Yet. I know a guy here in Austin that does support for them.

Back to the rant. Yeah, it's cheaper to send these jobs overseas. Sure. For the big companies. The problem with it is that these companies are sending, what in the computer industry are, entry-level jobs overseas. They are eliminating the bottom rungs of the ladder into the industry. I did my time in the tech support trenches years ago. I still thank Netcom, may it rest in peace, for giving me a chance to get into computers. I know that IBM sure as hell wouldn't have even given me the time of day if I hadn't put my time in elsewhere. I worked my way up the hard way. Tech support > Support Lead> Support Manager > Sysadmin > Software Tester where I am now. I learned a little bit with each step over the years.

When you move all these things overseas you eliminate those bottom three rungs. Where are people supposed to start?

: Carol Of The Bells from the album "Christmas Eve In Sarajevo" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

My iBook returns!

Man, I didn't realize how much I relied on my little iBook until I didn't have it. The display had died and it also wouldn't use an external display. I figured a dead video chip. I called Apple last Monday evening and got them to send me a shipping box. It was too late to get the box out that day so we received the shipping box Wednesday afternoon. The day before Thanksgiving. We packed it up and called Airborne to come pick it up. They arrived to pick it up around 4PM. It arrived back at our house at 9:30 this morning with a new motherboard. Unfortunatley they failed to put in a G4 while they were at it. ;-)

A 5 day turn-around on a holiday weekend. Very impressive. Now I know why I love Apple so much.