Scott's Stories

Who'll Start the Rain?

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:28:40 GMT

A few days ago, I was driving the usual route home from the holidays. When I encountered some snow a little before the halfway point, I discovered that my windshield wipers were in awful shape. I found an automotive supply place and bought new ones. These were my first foray into the new style of wipers, the ones that use a flexible, one-piece frame to apply pressure along the entire length of the blade all the time. With no gaps in the structure to ice up, they're supposed to be more reliable than traditional whippletree blades.

Naturally, when acquiring what amounted to a new gadget, I was eager to try it. Sadly, the weather didn't cooperate; it was clear sailing the rest of the way home. There was snow here yesterday morning, but it finished falling by the time I got in the car. I knew that wishing for inclement weather was folly of the highest order, especially considering how close winter was, and I suspected that the weather gods would have something to say about it.

Tonight, it was finally raining. That it waited until dark was mildly irritating. That the wiper weather was rain, and on a day that I parked unusually far from the door at work, made perfect sense. On the bright side, the wipers performed very well. The real test will be how they hold up through the winter.

Rookie Mistake

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:01:25 GMT

Just before going through airport security, I took inventory. I'd made a rookie mistake: I left my car and house keys in my checked bag. On the bright side, I keep a backup car key in my wallet on the advice of ddmerillat. Assuming the power's on, I can use the garage door opener to get into the house. Whew! Does the redundancy of the checked keys mean my luggage will come through safely, or does the redundancy ensure that my luggage won't make it?

Watch What You Say about My Package

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:02:31 GMT

As previously documented, I had to ship my defective hard drive back to the vendor. As part of my lunch yesterday, I visited a local shipping emporium. Employee A handed me a small box, eight inches on all sides, which was plenty large for the intended cargo. I taped it up with the provided packing tape and filler, completed the form, and returned to the counter.

By that point, another customer had entered. He got to the counter just before I did with his monstrosity. It was a bass guitar in a hard case. He may have started with a single cardboard box around the hard case, but he'd chopped it down some and bound the whole thing up with a combination of twine and duct tape. As he cut me off, he looked at my little cube and quipped "you call that a package?"

As Employee A entered my shipment into the computer, Employee B explained that the beast was not eligible to be shipped due to the use of duct tape. All of the duct tape would have to be replaced with or covered by packing tape. He protested that he'd shipped with duct tape many times in the past, and replacing the duct tape would take him "three days". She wouldn't budge. What, he wanted to know, was different about duct tape that would make it unsuitable? As a fan of Not Always Right, a notorious know-it-all, and the object of his scorn, I chimed in "probably the adhesive." He left in disgust.

On her way back to the office, Employee B turned to me and said "thank you!"

"Did you hear what he said to me before you started helping him?"

"No."

"He said 'you call that a package?' Now I can tell him 'yes, yes I do, because they'll ship it!'"

We'll Always Have Those 36 Hours

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:36:44 GMT

Gosh, it sure was nice to have a new computer! Friday night until three, Saturday for almost the entire day and well into Sunday morning. Rise of Nations, Trackmania Nations, Portal, full-screen HD video that didn't skip. Truly, it was paradise.

Late Sunday morning, though, Windows reported hard drive trouble. Seagate's test program reported failures on the SMART test, and both the short and long form drive self tests. Tonight, the drive wasn't even working enough to erase it before returning it. This makes me profoundly unhappy. Fortunately, the only data to be concerned with is passwords for web sites and some software product keys. Unfortunately, that ain't nothing.

I'll ship the drive back tomorrow, but this vendor doesn't do cross-shipping. If I'm lucky, the return/replacement process will have a new drive back to me in less than two weeks. Argh, argh, argh. If I walk into Best Buy tomorrow, $100 will get me a Western Digital with similar speed and capacity, which is only $10 more than I spent on Mr. Defecto. The problem is that I won't have any time to get everything reinstalled until next Monday. Verily, I say argh.

Windows 7: Installation

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:11:47 GMT

Monday, I ordered all of the parts for a new computer. With the exception of the video card, it all got assembled Wednesday night. I borrowed a video card and was able to boot Ubuntu from a live CD to verify some functionality. Sadly, the motherboard's network device is too new for Ubuntu 9.04, and 9.10 doesn't come out until next week. Sigh! Thursday night, the video card arrived and I installed it. Tonight, Windows 7 OEM arrived. Woo!

I had a moment of panic when my boss asked me if I was sure that the components I'd bought would be compatible with Windows 7. Hilariously, I hadn't given the matter much thought. Having already run into the issue with the That thought was at the front of my mind when the Windows installer couldn't identify a hard drive. Eep! Windows offered to load drivers for exotic storage devices, so I tried loading the motherboard's CD, but didn't find anything that the installer liked. Out of frustration, I tried to have Ubuntu install, but it couldn't find the drive, either. Double eep! I opened up the case and scrutinized the power and data cable connections to the drive and the data connection cable to the motherboard. No problem there. I tried poking around in the BIOS, remembering that some require activation of the individual SATA ports. I couldn't find anything like that, and since I hadn't needed to do that to enable the SATA port for the optical drive, it seemed suspect. The answer was that the SATA power cable had become disconnected from the power supply. D'oh!

Windows 7 got up and running pretty well after that, but couldn't see the network device. I downloaded the latest network driver installer from Intel, but I can't tell if it's doing anything or not. I caved and tried running the driver installer on the motherboard's CD, hoping against hope that either the CD has 7 drivers on it or that 7 is OK with Vista drivers for the moment. Victory! On to the updates. I'm not the least bit surprised to see that the OS hasn't even been released for 48 hours but there are already eleven updates. Network updating is a beautiful thing.

Norton Internet Security just installed so fast, I barely had time to think about it. Holy crap, Norton! Reviews of last year's Norton that talked about how much faster it ran, so I was optimistic that I wouldn't mind this year's version. Having the installer finish in less than a minute is a great first impression. The UI definitely has a lot in it that suggests they not only improved their speed, they also want you to be able to quantify how much of your system's drag is caused by them. Excellent.

And now to begin the driver download bonanza. Wacom's web site is made of epic fail. It's not even possible to select your region without having Flash. Jerks!

I'm posting now so I can shut down the laptop and start really using my new desktop. Whee!

Jauron in Detroit Revisited

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:57:47 GMT

Back on NFL roster cut-down day, I predicted that the Bills would go seven and nine due to Dick Jauron's tenacious seven-and-nineness. At the time, I advised disregarding Jauron's partial season as the interim head coach for Detroit, since it messed with the purity of the 0.4375. Now, I think, is the perfect time to revisit that season. If the Bills fire him before next weekend's scheduled pummeling by the Jets at the Meadowlands, Jauron can remain the model of consistency, with one-and-four records in both of his partial seasons and remain exactly seven-and-nine for full seasons.

That "Parity" They Keep Talking About

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:39:19 GMT

The NFL aims for "parity", which they hope will keep all teams somewhat competitive occasionally. To this end, they have revenue sharing and salary capping and a very slight adjustment—one-eighth of the games—to the schedule of each team based on the previous year's performance. Sometimes, parity looks like a joke, like 2007, when the league featured the 16-0 Patriots and the 1-15 Dolphins. Today, there were some flashes. For a stretch during the four-o'clock games today, all three games (Jets @ Saints, Cowboys @ Broncos, Bills @ Dolphins) had scores of 10-0. Later, I noticed that the Jets and Bills were both trailing 17-3 at the same time. At the end of the game, the Bills and the Dolphins are now both at 1-3. If you squint your eyes hard enough to ignore the comparison of within-division records and the recent history of the two teams, you could almost call it parity!

Popcorn!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:12:46 GMT

For most of the Bills games last year, I got into the habit of making wings. I bake them instead of frying. It takes forever, especially since I like them crispy, but the result is spectacular. I season them with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder while they bake, so they're delicious even before the sauce hits. I haven't bothered to make them much since the Super Bowl, though, because the smell lingers and the cleanup sucks.

I knew today was game day when I got up, but somehow forgot to wear my Bills shirt until halfway through Jets-Pats. The Bills-Bucs game started at four. Lunch had been leftover pizza, and I wasn't really hungry. As the game wore on, the Bills had the lead, but it wasn't a terribly commanding one, and Bucs QB Byron Leftwich seemed like he might find his stride. The momentum was definitely not Billsward at the half. I regretted not having wings on hand, even though the game would've been over by the time they were ready to eat. The Bills game needed to be kicked up a notch, and wings would've been perfect.

I've stopped keeping ready-to-eat snacks in the house. These days, it's all about hot-air popcorn for me. I can prepare it several different ways, it doesn't take too long to make, and it justifies the ownership of a single-purpose kitchen appliance. This, then, was the answer for the game. I would make wing sauce and put it on popcorn. I've done this before, and the result is fantastically delicious. It's quick, the clean-up is much easier, and it's probably even less nutritionally detrimental. I started the sauce simmering on the stove at halftime and waited until part way into the fourth quarter before I popped the popcorn.

Very shortly after I sat back down with my bowl of wing-flavored popcorn, Terrell Owens scored a touchdown, his first in a Bills uniform. Yes! That was precisely the kind of thing I'd had in mind when I started the sauce. It was only after the game that I was reminded that T.O. once left a note on his locker telling reporters to "Getcha Popcorn Ready". In retrospect, the timing was almost creepy. Almost.

Football, Football, Football!

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:59:35 GMT

Football 1: Today was the day that NFL teams are required to cut their rosters down to 53 men. The person given the job of summoning a player to his firing is known as "the Turk". While trying to find the origins of the name, I realized that I could play Rise of Nations as the Turks in honor of those given the unpleasant task of sending young hopefuls to their doom. Hours later, when I finally sat down to play RON, I forgot, and left it on random. Random turned out to be quite serendipitous: it picked Turks! Speaking of Turks, I feel bad for ousted Bills offensive coordinator Turk Schonert, who probably now wishes he'd never been promoted from quarterback coach last season.

Football 2: I've only been interested in football since the beginning of the 2007 season. That year, the Bills went 7-9, a repeat of 2006. Last year, the 5-1 start looked great, but it turned out only one of those wins was against a playoff team. As the season wore on and the Bills got swept by the division, I started to joke that they'd finish 7-9. I wasn't sure who they'd beat in the last few weeks to notch that last win, and Denver was a pleasant surprise. When head coach Dick Jauron's contract was extended after three consecutive 7-9 finishes, I joked with fellow fans that we were in for a fourth great year of 7-9 football. I got curious to see what exactly Jauron had accomplished before Buffalo. Let's skip his brief, mid-season replacement tenure in Detroit (squarely in the middle of the Millen era, no less) and go back to Chicago. There, he won four different NFL Coach of the Year awards for the 2001 season, when the Bears went 13-3 but lost their first playoff game. His regular season record was 35-45 over five seasons. My jaw dropped when I saw those numbers. His average record was . . . wait for it . . . exactly 7-9. In 2003, the last year he coached in Chicago, the Bears went 7-9. That extends his current streak to four seasons. What are the chances he won't make it five?

Football 3: For the five seasons starting with 2008, the Bills have moved one home game per season to Toronto. The NFL schedulers get to decide which game that is. Last year's Toronto game was an embarrassing loss to the Dolphins. This year, it's going to be a Thursday-night game against the Jets. Thursday games are broadcast only on the NFL Network, which Time Warner doesn't carry. The team's primary market gets to simulcast the NFLN coverage, but Rochester is a secondary market for the Bills. Even if the game sells out, I almost certainly won't get to see it. I would not be surprised to hear that Buffalo's offense (third OC in three years! Woo!) will run into Rex Ryan's defense like a very painful simile, so maybe it's merciful.

Phone Fail

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:49:27 GMT

I stopped by the Verizon store to complain that my phone was often spontaneously shutting itself off in my pocket. The tech slapped the phone around a bit until he got it to fail. He swapped batteries and confirmed that the problem was with the phone and not the battery. Since I pay the monthly insurance whatsit, he replaced the phone. The good news: he was able to transfer my photos and phone book. The bad news: he wasn't able to transfer my texting history or my speed dials. When I realized that my speed dials were missing, I downloaded the "sync your contacts" application and ran it, expecting it to restore my backups from the network copy. Instead, it transferred the phone's copy to the backup site! I went to the web site and discovered that I was too optimistic by half; the web site doesn't have a field for speed dials at all. Urgh!

Verizon's web site lets you redownload applications lost in a warranty-covered phone switch provided the applications are less than a year old. The only non-free app that qualified for me is Sudoku. They've apparently replaced the one I've been playing since December with a complete rewrite. The old one was a little ugly, but it had simple, responsive controls and good readability. My biggest complaint was the Japanese theming in spite of Sudoku's American roots.

The new Verizon Sudoku has lots of zany features, including a "compete against everyone else" mode that compares your time on a specific daily puzzle with everyone else. That's clever, but the core game screen is less readable, with fancy, shiny black numbers on a dark red background. Worse, the cursor is a super-bright yellow. Worst, the thing is constantly stealing the cursor to perform little animations to congratulate you for completing a row or a column or a box. You can't fill in numbers or move the cursor while it's doing the little dance, but they don't pause the clock. When you finish the grid, the animation takes several seconds, and the animation time is counted as part of your time to complete the puzzle! Idiots! Sudoku is a pencil-and-paper game. Let me play it like one!

Palin's Gubernatorial Resignation

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:33:43 GMT

Why would Sarah Palin resign her governorship?

She's Mark Sanford's Argentinian lover.
She shot a man in Juneau just to watch him die.
She's urgently needed to console Norm Coleman.

Others?

Playoff Beards

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:36:12 GMT

I didn't shave between Christmas and the Superbowl. The Pittsburgh Steelers won.

I didn't shave between Mother's Day and the Stanley Cup finals. The Pittsburgh Penguins won.

Coincidence? I think so. Sorry, Pirates!

Gang Cutting?

Tue, 26 May 2009 03:33:15 GMT

My current favorite soft drink has a deal going: each 12-pack of cans comes with a $1 coupon off of the next 12-pack. Today was the first time I was planning to use two of them in the same store visit. I decided to read the fine print to make sure that wasn't prohibited. It wasn't, but I found something more baffling. The store is instructed to reject coupons which are "reproduced, gang cut or mint condition." I can understand reproduced. What I can't understand is how anybody's supposed to recognize "gang cut" as distinct from normal cutting. For that matter, wouldn't obsessive-compulsives be penalized for precision cutting which might be mistaken for "mint condition"?

Starting the Month the Geeky Way

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:12:08 GMT

It was raining inside and out at work tonight. I made eight code commits in the space of an hour. Such commit storms are pretty typical for me, but tonight's was eight commits for a reason. The last one had a revision number of 314. Sure, it was late for Pi Day, but I wasn't interested in staying around long enough to reach 501 for May Day.

Ask Lazyweb: Laundry Lore

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:31:10 GMT

It was only last summer that I learned to skip fabric softener when washing towels. The softener takes up residence where the water is supposed to go and reduces the towel's ability to absorb. Another important fabric softener detail: it builds up on the dryer's lint screen, and must be removed with soap to restore proper air flow. Are there any other laundry tips like that you were surprised to learn?

I'd also like to know if anyone has used those dryer balls. I'm on board for the cost savings from reduced drying time and the elimination of softener sheets, but it seems to me that they might achieve the softness much like a meat tenderizer would. I would think this ages the clothes more rapidly. The reviews online are less than helpful, so I'm hoping to hear about personal experience.

Whatever it is, I'll have it with everything.

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:39:16 GMT

Lunch today was a cheeseburger plate, hash browns only, with everything. For those who've never experienced Rochester's most notorious contribution to the culinary arts, those cheeseburger patties were served directly on the home fries, no bun required. The "everything" translated into a heaping pile of diced raw onions, tablespoon after tablespoon of yellow mustard, and "hot sauce", a spiced ground beef slurry. I then poured on the Louisiana-style hot sauce you probably thought of when I said "hot sauce". And then, to mop up any flavor that managed to elude the fork, white bread with butter.

A plate is food that appeals directly to the part of the brain we share with lizards. The good news: the place had Trappey's instead of Tabasco, so the plate's signature burning and indigestion were significantly mitigated. The bad news: the plate's signature burning and indigestion were severely mitigated, undercutting the feeling of accomplishment that comes from polishing off a plate.

For dinner, I had Japanese. California roll, salmon roll, seaweed salad, two types of dumpling, a tempura assortment (broccoli, shrimp, mushroom, sweet potato, and eggplant), and shrimp sauteed with onions and asparagus. The flavors tended toward the subtle; my usual sushi selection is much more complicated and spicy.

For a while there, I felt like I ate at the two ends of the food sophistication spectrum. Could any two meals be more different? Now that I've enumerated the components of the dinner, I see that there's a strong common thread. Whatever it was, I had it "with everything". Perhaps tomorrow I'll get some plain pizza. Sauce + cheese + dough sounds downright simple.

The Internet is Full of Fail

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:58:39 GMT

We'll start with You Probably Lose, the addictive new Flash game from Bad Gods. After each round, be sure to visit Sad Trombone. I would mention Fail Blog at this point, but they've mostly been made of fail lately.

Ah, the things one finds late at night when waiting for the dryer to finish . . .

Happy Pi Day!

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:05:19 GMT

I went shopping last night to stock up on pie ingredients to celebrate π Day. I started at the fabric store, but they didn't have any French silk. When I asked where I could score some chicken pot at the grocery store, thay called the police. Oh well, there's always next year!

Laundry Delay, a One-Question Poll

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:16:14 GMT

View Poll: Laundry Delay

Weeping, Wailing, Gnashing of Teeth

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:46:12 GMT

I think the TiVo is dead.

Dear Mortgage Holder

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:20:38 GMT

Dear Mortgage Company,

You have offered several times to replace monthly billing with biweekly debiting. The idea is to have my payments line up with my paychecks and to pay my debt off faster. It works out to a full extra payment per year, which you generously apply to principal. I was seriously considering taking them you on it until I saw that you want to charge me $375 to sign up and $1.50 per payment. I was outraged enough at the up-front payment, but paying an extra $39 per year for something that benefits you anyway? Aw, hell no! I can configure my bank's bill payment thingy to do the same thing for $0 to start and $0 per payment. I pity the folks who sign up for the weekly debits, since it'd be $78 per year for them.

Sincerely,
tfofurn

Appropriate Attire for Sitting on the Couch

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:55:09 GMT

I grew up in Pittsburgh, but was more into the Pirates than the Steelers. Football held little appeal for me until last year. I used to pride myself on going 36 hours without learning who won the Super Bowl. Last year, though, I got hooked when I watched the Bills lose to the Broncos in the season opener by one point after leading the whole way. Since then, I've watched the Bills go 7-9 twice. Sigh.

So today the Steelers are playing the Chargers. I haven't watched the Steelers play since the Super Bowl a few years ago. If you'd asked me two years ago, I would've scoffed that at this distance from Heinz Field, nothing I do today can possibly influence the game. Now, not so much. Am I showing support for the Steelers by wearing a Bills shirt because the AFC North is closer to the AFC East than the AFC West? Am I jinxing the Steelers by wearing a shirt for a team that last had a winning season in 2004? Should I hit a store and buy a yellow dish towel to wave around the living room? Can I be confident that if the Steelers win today, they'll also be able to beat Baltimore next weekend?

Update: I found a shirt that's as close to the black and gold as I could've hoped in an emergency. And the Steelers won! Woo hoo!

Ask Lazyweb: Wireless Print Server?

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:46:06 GMT

Has anyone had any experience with a wireless print server? I have a USB printer (Samsung ML-2010) connected to my desktop, but my desktop's wireless connection is flaky. I also don't relish leaving the desktop on 24/7 when we primarily need printing nights and weekends. A refurbished Netgear WGPS606 has a very attractive feature set at a great price, but doesn't review well. The Linksys WPS54G reviews a little better, but might have issues working with Vista.

Another possibility would be to use the Cube as a print server. It would suck a lot less power than my XP desktop. The bad news is the networking, though there are a lot more wireless USB adapters in the world than there are wireless print servers.

Thoughts?

No Respect for Baritones

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:00:52 GMT

The chorus just spent twenty minutes with all four voice parts singing the melody. It's great for picking out subtle synchronization issues in the lyrics, but it causes the melody singers to lose track of their own notes. One of the baritones suggested making everyone sing the bari part for a few minutes. "No thanks," said the coach, "I just had dinner."

What's in a Name?

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:39:39 GMT

I'm at Epcot with my fiancee and ddmerillat. We just had an exquisite lunch at the Italian place in the World Showcase. I had the Braised Veal Shank with polenta and root vegetables. It was exquisite. I had to laugh when the bill arrived and I found out I'd just enjoyed Stinco di Maiale. Now I understand why the menu says "braised pork shank." :-)