the art of writing is discovering what you believe
Tiger (aka OS X 10.4) won’t network on my iBook and if I try to read already downloaded mail, Mail.app crashes.
So far, I am underwhelmed.
for some reason, the Installer didn’t see the existing system and installed as if it were a new install, wiping out little details like user accounts, network settings. No files, though.
More as I disentangle the mess.
My debacle with soaked carpets was starting to turn sour, and I mean more than the smell (I have a mold allergy so this could be a big problem). The carpet was starting to show signs of Petri-fication, as in mold growth. I did a little Google-aided research and found a solution.
I had to go back out to get the noisy carpet cleaner I used this weekend, but instead of their spendy solution, I used a strong solution of Lysol to kill the mold. And it seems to have worked. For one thing, I think this cleaner works better by getting the carpet drier, and for another the Lysol really seems to work. A weak bleach solution would probably work as well but with the risks of colorfastness and vapors.
I am going to let it dry overnight (with a fan blowing over it) and see if it needs another go tomorrow. But early signs look good. Next steps are to actually plumb in the washer discharge pipe so this doesn’t happen again.
What do people die of (WISQARS)?:
Top 6 causes of death by years of potential life before age 65 (US, 2002)
Unintentional Injury (2,159,266)
Malignant Neoplasms (1,903,274)
Heart Disease (1,434,511)
Perinatal Period (924,364)
Suicide (666,398)
Homicide (579,268)Over 50% (1,166,780) of the years lost due to Unintentional Injury are due to motor vehicle injuries. If we counted it as a separate category it alone would be the third leading cause of death. Drive carefully, folks.
That’s a surprising statistic: auto accidents account for more than half the years lost to premature death.
Now with FeedBurner . . .
I decided to take another look at this: the counter made it appealing, though I seem to have nuked my majestic count of 4 readers to zero in the process of setting this up.
Herewith follows the culmination of much experimentation into how to make reliably excellent pancakes. With this recipe, you can achieve the same fluffy texture as any mix or restaurant can offer, in the comfort of your own kitchen.
1 1/2 cups milk, warmed to between room and blood temp (30 secs to a minute in the microwave will do it): add a tablespoon of vinegar. Let stand.
Combine:
Add to the milk:
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until mixed but not smooth.Cook on a prepared[*] griddle in 1/2 cup increments.
* Prepared means heated to where a drop of water skips across the surface, rather than sitting to boil away or vaporizing on contact.
To follow up on the ordeal of overflowing washing machines, dead dishwashers, et al, I have ordained that there is a special circle in Hell for electricians who add circuits to existing switch panels without labeling same. And adjacent to that is another cozy spot for appliance manufacturers who ship appliances without fittings that their products require and which sell for the outlandish sum of $3.41. Yes, Frigidaire/Electrolux, I’m looking in your direction. If I need a 90° male fitting coupled with with a 3/8 inch compression fitting — hardly the kind of thing one would just have handy in the kitchen junk drawer — why not ship one? I suspect a large transnational appliance manufacturer could knock the price down even lower.
So I have a new dishwasher, after one trip to buy it and two more to buy wire nuts and the aforementioned fitting. Dishwashers are actually an easy appliance to install: they’re physically light and the connections are pretty simple to make.
And how was your weekend/Mother’s Day?
Continue reading “purgatorio”
I haven’t repeated my experiment with serializing a book since I did Flatland a while back: partly the experiment was about the mechanics of doing it. I learned a few things and perhaps its time to take another look.
Mrs. Shelley’s book, perhaps? I’ve never read it, and it’s not a horror novel, despite what Hollywood has done with the character. So perhaps I’ll see what’s involved in posting a bit of that each day.
Blank lines at top of feeds: breaking validation – how to fix? « WordPress Support:
So the fix for this is to reinstall. It seems to fix it but I have no idea why. It seems the whole installation was sending a blank first line, not just the feeds. Reinstalling seems so primitive: even running diff against the files doesn’t seem to reveal anything.
Tomorrow may be Mother’s Day but I always say that every day is Father’s Day. Most days, I really believe it.
These past couple of days have been pretty trying, though. Between my struggles to get this video burned to a CD, to my washing machine flooding my basement, to my dishwasher breaking, all in the past 24 hours, it’s been pretty annoying.
Continue reading “every day is Father’s Day”
So my rendering on my ancient hardware has failed twice in iDVD: I am punting on it and just saving it all as a large CD-ROM quality QuickTime. Apparently the process was failing on encoding some audio I added, but I know at the same time the system had run out of swap: I suspect more than coincidence at work there.
Oh, well. The QuickTime is projected to take a mere 120 minutes: we’ll see if that proves to be the case.
Now playing: 5_1. Tempo molto moderato – Largamento – Allegro moderato by Sir Colin Davis & the Boston Symphony Orchestra from the album “Complete Sibelius Symphonies No 2, 5” | Get it (
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