links for 2006-12-12

argh, the technology and its discontents

Item: This TiVo I got the other week looks to be worth every penny I paid for it. I installed a new drive (a 160Gb, double the original size, ostensibly gives 160 hours of recording time), but it still fails to come up to any useful screen. I suspect the power supply may also be flaky, but I haven’t been convinced yet. I’m going to let it chug along overnight and see if it has gotten anywhere by morning.

So I may have added 160Gb of storage to my local network, if nothing else. Fixing the box through TiVo is $159. Not sure it’s worth doing if I have never actually used the service. Similar boxes are selling for between $100 and $600 on eBay right now, so it may not be a dead loss. Ordinarily, selling something I got for free would give me a twinge of conscience but since the person I got it from knew it was dead and neglected to mention that, I don’t feel all that charitable about it.

Item: my new RAZR V3c phone is BlueTooth-enabled but only in the most minimal way. You can use iSync but that’s it. No file transfers or browsing: the OBEX (Object Exchange) protocol is inactive. Allegedly, a trip to the local Verizon store will put this right, but I’m not holding my breath.

And people wonder why I still shoot film and process my own negatives, make my own bread, and bind books by hand. Because those things work, consistently, reliably: any mistakes are my own, not due to the caprice of some marketeer or the incompetence of an engineer.

<update> I called Verizon, both the local store and the national call center, and got a firm but polite “no” for my trouble. The national guy was trying to tell me that the phone doesn’t support OBEX over BlueTooth but I smacked that down gently and made it clear that it is not a technological problem, but a business decision. The other kids who have RAZRs can do this, but my choice of Verizon means I can’t. By the end of the call, he sounded relieved that a. the call was over and b. I hadn’t shouted at him or called him names.

In the meantime, you can do OBEX over a wire like this one:
 Lonnie Usb-2.0-Mini-Cable--2

eBay has ’em as cheap as $3 but do I really want a cable?

what does citizenship mean?

Citizenship: Can you Pass the Test?:

What is the rule of law? What is an ‘inalienable’ right? If you’re not sure, you might have a trouble with the new naturalization test.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is rolling out a pilot test program in 10 cities, including Yakima. We’ll hear more about it, and your stories. What path did you take to citizenship? If you are a citizen, what does that mean to you? We’ll take your questions about the new test and hear your thoughts and stories about the meaning of citizenship.

Tomorrow on Weekday: Ask the Animal Behaviorist

I’ve added a poll in the left sidebar: what do you think about this? Do you think being born here is enough to make you a responsible citizen of the most powerful nation in the world? Part of this assumes the educational system(s) are imparting a solid understanding of how this country came to be, what it was founded on and what its founders and early citizens rejected. The jury is out on how well that’s going.

links for 2006-12-11

on system upgrades

FreeBSD 4.x EoL:

In short:

  • FreeBSD is a volunteer project, and we don’t want to volunteer to support FreeBSD 4.x beyond the scheduled EoL date of January 31st, 2007;
  • Even if we did want to support FreeBSD 4.x beyond that date, I’m not certain that we would be able to do so, given that both FreeBSD and the rest of the world has moved on; and
  • You’ve had lots of warning that this was going to happen, so it’s a bit late to start complaining now.

Looks like this needs to happen by year end or so. t’would be nice to have a second system to just move to, but that doesn’t seem likely, unless I find one by the side of the road. Not that I wouldn’t find something like that an improvement over my coal-fired circa 2000 Athlon.
There are ways to upgrade in place, as noted in my del.icio.us bookmarks, but if I look at the FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Migration Guide, this makes a lot of sense:

Probably the most straightforward approach is that of “backup everything, reformat, reinstall, and restore user data.”

As long as it has been since I have stripped this system to the bare metal, it makes a lot of sense to take the time and do it that way now.

what do you people eat, anyway?

A friend writes (re vegetarian diets):

What do you eat on Thanksgiving? đŸ˜‰

My reply:
Seriously, it’s really not as hard as people think. If you already like seasonal vegetables, this is just an excuse to eat more of ’em. We had carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, a meatless shepherd’s pie, fresh bread, cranberry sauce, and ran out of leftovers by Saturday đŸ˜‰

I also recommended this book:

“Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home:
Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day” (Moosewood Collective)

Continue reading “what do you people eat, anyway?”

ouch: I wasn’t the only one annoyed

I may have been irritated at the recent story in the Times about irresponsible cyclists, but today’s letters (not online yet) were stronger in tone than my complaints: “overfed chucklehead” as a label for the “hyper-skilled” cyclist drinking a PBR on his tallbike? Wow. And mentioning the name of the mathematician riding with a Beck’s beer is sure to help his job search when someone does a reference check.