A few weeks ago, the display went out on my laptop -- it's an old IBM Thinkpad, and the little fluorescent tube that makes the screen light up finally went out on it. Perfectly reasonable, and no big deal -- other than I had to order the part, disassemble the display subassembly, replace said part, and then put everything back together again.
I managed to do this (a task that involved no small number of miniscule screws of various sizes) not only successfully -- I'm using the laptop for this blog entry -- but ended up with the same number of parts as I started out with: I experienced neither a screw shortage, nor any mechanical amplification (having more parts when I finished than when I began).
Damn, I'm good.
And modest, too!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Wal*Mart spreads H1N1
Really.
"... employees of the Arkansas-based retail giant -- even its food handlers -- feel they have no choice but to work when they're sick. That's because the company gives workers demerits and deducts pay for staying home when they're sick or caring for sick children."I think it might be a good idea to do your shopping in Real Stores for a while, folks...
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Fierce is as fierce does
If I'm ever attacked by a horde of plastic or paper bags, I want my kitten Radar on my side -- the things wouldn't stand a chance.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Cruel Red Dot
The Red Dot (tm) has turned out to be an unspeakably cruel tormenter of the cats.
It has them chasing all over the apartment for as long as they're willing/able to go after it. It also torments them by going places that they can't quite reach, wandering around in front of them just out of ambush range, suddenly disappearing without warning (only to reappear somewhere else), and exhibiting some rather dramatic speed and direction changes while it's being chased.
Of course, there's no point to being a cruel Red Dot (tm) unless it runs them up and down their cat tree a dozen times or more, leaving both of them laying on the floor panting as they try to plot SOME way to catch it.
Neither of them is showing any signs of losing interest in catching it, however.
It has them chasing all over the apartment for as long as they're willing/able to go after it. It also torments them by going places that they can't quite reach, wandering around in front of them just out of ambush range, suddenly disappearing without warning (only to reappear somewhere else), and exhibiting some rather dramatic speed and direction changes while it's being chased.
Of course, there's no point to being a cruel Red Dot (tm) unless it runs them up and down their cat tree a dozen times or more, leaving both of them laying on the floor panting as they try to plot SOME way to catch it.
Neither of them is showing any signs of losing interest in catching it, however.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
I am Evil...
Yes, I certainly am.
While at Target today, I got a new laser pointer (mouse-shaped, $3.99 with an extra set of batteries) to annoy the cats with.
Since I've gotten home, I've:
While at Target today, I got a new laser pointer (mouse-shaped, $3.99 with an extra set of batteries) to annoy the cats with.
Since I've gotten home, I've:
- Gotten both of them spinning around in circles until they got dizzy and couldn't walk straight.
- Used sudden direction changes to get them to trip over their own feet.
- Let them chase it around in the kitchen, then stopping it IN their water dish.
- "Walked" around in front of them until I see the pre-pounce butt-wiggle, then suddenly turning it off ("Hey! Where'd it go?!").
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Caturday 20091017
Radar demonstrates why she's such a dumbshit: trying to catch her own tail...
Note the lack of coordination and balance as she almost falls off the cat tree a couple of times.
Note the lack of coordination and balance as she almost falls off the cat tree a couple of times.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Almost
I'm sure everyone has heard the old saying that "'Almost' only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes". I think most would agree that the same principle applies to 'wants' and 'intentions'.
Well, if His Obamaness can win the Nobel Peace Prize for his intentions to change the world and all that when he took office, then I by-God want my Nobel prizes in Math and Physics, since I fully INTENDED to get degrees and make big advances in those fields when I was younger.
I mean, fair is fair...
Well, if His Obamaness can win the Nobel Peace Prize for his intentions to change the world and all that when he took office, then I by-God want my Nobel prizes in Math and Physics, since I fully INTENDED to get degrees and make big advances in those fields when I was younger.
I mean, fair is fair...
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Demonstrable Geekiness
While I'm nowhere near "professional grade" at programming, I have managed to finish my little learning-to-program-in-Java project.
It's a simple, basic little utility to let someone interested in building a small (home/cabin) solar panel (Photo-Voltaic) to generate and store some amount of electricity.
The program lets the user enter and adjust a variety of different loads (a fridge, TV, etc), how many of what sizes of solar panels and batteries, power inverters for those things that NEED regular "line" power, and a few other little helpful options. As the different user-input values change, the program recalculates everything. The user has the option to either print the information to a printer, or save it to a computer file that can be imported to a spreadsheet (where they can get serious about playing with the numbers, if they want). The program is called PVcalc, and is available for download from my website.
If you're interested, curious, or just like to watch trainwrecks, go on over and get yourself a copy and let me know how bad I suck at programming :-)
It's a simple, basic little utility to let someone interested in building a small (home/cabin) solar panel (Photo-Voltaic) to generate and store some amount of electricity.
The program lets the user enter and adjust a variety of different loads (a fridge, TV, etc), how many of what sizes of solar panels and batteries, power inverters for those things that NEED regular "line" power, and a few other little helpful options. As the different user-input values change, the program recalculates everything. The user has the option to either print the information to a printer, or save it to a computer file that can be imported to a spreadsheet (where they can get serious about playing with the numbers, if they want). The program is called PVcalc, and is available for download from my website.
If you're interested, curious, or just like to watch trainwrecks, go on over and get yourself a copy and let me know how bad I suck at programming :-)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Not for mere mortals...
I've been teaching myself the Java programming language for the past couple of weeks. It has been something of an "adventure", but I've actually rather enjoyed it.
I wanted to learn Java, specifically, because it is widely touted as being a cross-platform programming environment: something written in Java is supposed to run on a Windows box, a Linux machine, an Apple, or damn near anything else that can handle Java.
The downside of that kind of power and flexibility (TANSTAAFL!) is that doing things the Java way is appreciably different than what I've been used to. Doing math stuff in Java, for example, leaves one with a thorough grounding in touch-typing as a consequence of the refusal/inability of Java to automagically convert between types of numbers (integer, real, etc).
I've got my learn-by-doing program almost finished, and have run into what I reluctantly have to consider a major weakness: the inability to EASILY print simple, basic text to a (default) printer. By way of illustration, if I were using another programming language, I could do something relatively simple, like
printer.print "This is some text that I want to print"
to whatever the default printer was, using whatever passed for a default font and size.
In Java, however, it isn't that straightforward -- almost every cotton-picking little detail has to be declared, defined, and described... regardless of whether I'm printing a short line of text or rendering a copy of the Mona Lisa. While I don't doubt that the capabilities of printing in Java are wonderful, at this point it's SO damn flexible to me that I can't get hold of it well enough to actually do anything simple and basic with it.
Further aggravating my situation is that all of the tutorials that I've looked at have been of the starting-from-scratch, all-by-themselves variety; there doesn't seem to be anything that explains or demonstrates how to include printing basic text from within an existing program -- or, at least, not that I've been able to find/understand. If, or when, I finally get my head around how to print from within a Java application such as I've written, I may have to have a try at writing a "Java Printing for Dummies" tutorial.
In the mean time, it's various permutations of headache remedies and alcoholic beverages for me...
I wanted to learn Java, specifically, because it is widely touted as being a cross-platform programming environment: something written in Java is supposed to run on a Windows box, a Linux machine, an Apple, or damn near anything else that can handle Java.
The downside of that kind of power and flexibility (TANSTAAFL!) is that doing things the Java way is appreciably different than what I've been used to. Doing math stuff in Java, for example, leaves one with a thorough grounding in touch-typing as a consequence of the refusal/inability of Java to automagically convert between types of numbers (integer, real, etc).
I've got my learn-by-doing program almost finished, and have run into what I reluctantly have to consider a major weakness: the inability to EASILY print simple, basic text to a (default) printer. By way of illustration, if I were using another programming language, I could do something relatively simple, like
printer.print "This is some text that I want to print"
to whatever the default printer was, using whatever passed for a default font and size.
In Java, however, it isn't that straightforward -- almost every cotton-picking little detail has to be declared, defined, and described... regardless of whether I'm printing a short line of text or rendering a copy of the Mona Lisa. While I don't doubt that the capabilities of printing in Java are wonderful, at this point it's SO damn flexible to me that I can't get hold of it well enough to actually do anything simple and basic with it.
Further aggravating my situation is that all of the tutorials that I've looked at have been of the starting-from-scratch, all-by-themselves variety; there doesn't seem to be anything that explains or demonstrates how to include printing basic text from within an existing program -- or, at least, not that I've been able to find/understand. If, or when, I finally get my head around how to print from within a Java application such as I've written, I may have to have a try at writing a "Java Printing for Dummies" tutorial.
In the mean time, it's various permutations of headache remedies and alcoholic beverages for me...
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