A Whole Messa Stuff

I haven't written in a while. That makes me sad.

It seems like I have time for everything lately except writing. Maybe I need to hire an intern to act as my minstrel that follows me around for a while recording my adventures...

SnowUrchin, he did bravely craft

Documents that will never see

The rise of the sun nor the rise of the moon

Stored forever electronically.

Midway through his mighty task,

Some Cheetos he did obtain.

Then he stared out the window for 17 minutes

And wondered if it would rain...

No. Forget it. The minstrel idea would suck for everyone involved.

Here's the Cliff's Notes version of what has been going on:

Completed a prototype of a new website for the church. My new cut at it brings it up from the early-1990s feel it currently has to something that might have been cutting edge five years ago. I am glad to do the work, but I am a little shocked by how bizarre church folks can be about prioritizing church stuff (spending 20+ hours a week making flower baskets or chili cookoff flyers, say) over other stuff (making sure their 17-year-old doesn't get another DUI, say) – a point of view I hope to never, ever understand. Anyway, it's done. Just waiting on some art to gussy it up some before it goes live.

Read Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulsen. Normally, I would never consider reading anything with a title like this but I ran into an interesting excerpt on Wired.com and I thought I would give it a go. Exciting, awesome, nine thumbs up, etc, etc. Extremely well researched and surprisingly balanced – there is no hero, there is no villain. As a matter of fact, I had never categorized “hacker” as an occupation until reading this. It's not enough to make me want to take up a life of crime... but almost... :)

Fixed my washing machine. Lately the washer was displaying certain codes that indicated that the unit was not draining properly. It would stop in the middle of a cycle or force itself to run a second rinse cycle because it thought there was residual soap in the drain water. Here is a list of things that did not work:

1) Ignoring the problem.
2) Re-booting the washer by unplugging it an plugging it back in after 30 minutes.
3) Running cleaning cycle upon cleaning cycle.
4) Slightly rearranging the drain hose.
5) Prayer.

What I was not prepared to do is to throw up my hands in helplessness and have a Sears representative come out and do some silly adjustment, forcing me to take off four hours from work then pay him $249.58 to watch him turn a screwdriver one-quarter of one turn. My wife deserves better than that, anyway.

What fixed it was a visit to Fixya.com. I ran across an article describing how to check the pump filter on this model of washer and followed the steps. Three 7-millimeter screws later I was draining the residual water out of the washer into some awaiting towels. The pic you see is the disgusting mung that was trapped in the filter after a nylon bootie got sucked into there somehow. After cleaning everything out and putting everything back, the washer works just fine.

A huge “thank you” to richroth, the writer of the guide that helped me (and hundreds of others, it looks like) through this problem. You rock!

Replaced my wireless router. The thing would sometimes be ok for a long time, then sometimes kick us off every ten to fifteen minutes or so. Besides, it was three years old, low quality to begin with, and the signal strength was crummy in the living room. After replacing it we have had no issues. I thought the problem was due to some arcane ISP or signal-strength issue but my brother-in-law correctly diagnosed that the old router was the tall tent pole, here. Thanks, dude! It took less than an hour and all of our wireless geegaws and gizmos are much happier now. Even the wired stuff seems to be a bit faster.

Broke my record yesterday for treadmill walk/run: 31:49 for 5 kilometers. This is 51 seconds off my last best time. I am still only running it in chunks of 10 minutes or so then walking, then running again, though. Frankly, it is getting really boring. Maybe bumping up the speed a bit or the outside morning running thing will help.

More to come.