A rental disc arrives on Wednesday and I’m able to have it back in the mailbox for pickup on Thursday. The postal service, and an efficient local distribution center, can get me the next selection from my queue two days later for viewing over the weekend. Unless there’s a Monday holiday, this cycle permits 8 DVDs/mo. goes into 10.64 = 1.33 per movie. I’m liking that but maybe neflix is not. An “May we please have a moment of your time?” email arrived with a survey request. “We received Monarch of the Glen: Series 2: Disc 1 this morning and would like to learn when you returned this DVD…” (READ – we are tracking your rapid returns) Uh oh. I’ve heard stories about the Netflix throttle.
TV turnerdowner
Back in the day, before FastForward on the VCR and a Mute button for the remote, one suffered through the annoying commercials about cigarettes and head or stomach pain pills. As a work around we fabricated a simple clicker switch from the hobbyist parts bin at Sparky’s. This was a simple hardwired interrupt to one of the input leads on the speaker which killed the audio. Now there is software. Follows is a short list of Firefox Extensions that remove the clutter from your web browsing experience:
- Flashblock Flash can add coolness to page presentation but more and more of these animations are obnoxious promotional distraction. By default Flashblock hides the ads. If desired, you can override with a mouse click.
- Adblock for hands on click removal / banning
- Adblock filterset.G Updater (used in conjunction with Adblock) automates the entire removal process
Hawk Dawg
The casual reader may dismiss this post, family may derive some closure.
I gave up my buddy pal this afternoon… I hadn’t realized how his 10+ year existence was integral to our lifestyle. Our dear pet was always triggered to react predictably to the rustle of a key chain, footsteps, his master’s voice. He would watch you leave and wait patiently in the drive for your return knowing your vehicle by its exhaust beat drum.
He was the neighborhood “best trainned dog” and the park’s “frisbee champ“. The community will remember him for his ability to selfishly guard his tennis ball at the top of the drive and then precisely release it (to roll down to the curb) as one walked or drove by. They could then lob it to him and the process could repeat. He would wait there focused on that dang ball, until someone got a clue and heaved it back. He knew the property line.
Our best routine were all of those prime years when he and I would jog the park. It was always great exercise and on some days when I was lost to the computer keyboard his pining would give me incentive to get up and take him, irrespective of rain or shine. And so we would. It was always a good run and sometimes there were stories to tell.
Our children loved him growing up. They learned about dog handling and responsibility. It was hard to let him go. He is comfortable now. We shall miss him.
killin’ time
While waiting for my day job to begin I’ve found a new project / time sponge. Most of my flight logs (circa 1975-1988) are pen and ink ledger books. So, now is a good time to update the media and bring the old archives into the new millennium. Using mouse, keyboard, and Excel spreadsheet to transpose the data items, line for line, is not only tedious, but some of the airports flown have been renamed, moved, closed and lost to residential expansion. I have found several online resources which help me reconstruct these old flights. Some private landing fields, crop duster strips or ranches are obscure and difficult to pinpoint. One such challenge was Las Cruces and its private Club de Caza y Pesca de Baja California resort. All of these places seemed matter of fact in my mind 25 years ago and were merely scribbled, short hand, into these old books. Today, however, some locations are lost to memory and the documentation limited. Diener and Peck Ranches, Jubil and Schwartz Farms — where did they go?
Once found, I post their geo-coordinates, importing all into a database on my server. Using a few lines of PHP, and the Google Maps API, dynamic code displays a nifty push-pin map. It’s a work in progress and so far this map project displays my first decade of flying. View the output [ here ].
buying time
The welder boxed in the frame rail with 1/4 inch plate. A patch of sorts, the repair will postpone the demise of the old trailer. Rust is inevitable and I suppose that it didn’t help matters that I sped the process by dipping the ill protected iron in sea water over the last 3 seasons. A new trailer is a significant piece of change however, and thus the incentive to slow the cancer is on going. In a chain reaction this fix was precipitated by a faulty brake system with a seized (rusted) wheel cylinder. The neighbor, from the other side backed her minivan into a fender crushing it. Actually, the rust had mostly done its work – the careless driver only finished the job. Mounting new fenders, I discovered the structural weakness on the frame. Then heat from the welder’s gun did a number on electrical wiring for the running lights. Hopefully stringing new ones won’t turn up any more jobs.
saturation
After fifteen training days, without time off, I can literally powernap and see dials, charted data and performance minutia on the backside of my eyelids. Finally, a 2 hour verbal and then a 4 hour checkride culminates in a (successful) test of ability. An HS-125 type rating has been added to my air transport pilot certificate. Taking deep breaths now in anticipation of introduction to an actual machine and first flight, after a day or two off — hopefully.
who-rahhhh
I’m in a windowless classroom all day all week and the instructor is quite good at keeping us from drifting off. Every couple of minutes there’s a hand clap or a table slap report for punctuation. At first analysis I thought teach sounded like Fire Marshall Bill Burns with sentences beginning: “Lemme tell ya somethin’…” but now I’ve decided his voice is, if you can imagine it; Ned Flander’s (Simpsons) mixed up with drill sergeant, R. Lee Ermey (Mail Call).
ORB
I’m using SageTV to timeshift favorite TV network programing. Since I am on the road 50% of the time, I need to spaceshift this video as well. FTP will deliver the entire file to a portable device but here is an alternative solution: ORB live streams the media over the internet. You need a broadband connection and windows media player. If you have a desktop, laptop, PDA, or Smartphone you are good to go. Here is a demo if you can suffer through a home movie. No worries it’s a 6 minute short film. [On location in Maine]
Piggyback
A newspaper article today describes the behavior, that of using some one’s bandwidth, as akin to reading someone else’s newspaper over their shoulder. Ethical or not, WiFi makes this practice easy and many out of town road warriors have begun to depend on its availability. Experts estimate that only 30 percent of all WiFi installations have been secured. This means that most wireless access point are free (or assumed by many of us to be). Internet security does have a learning curve. An excellent source to become enlightened is Richard Gibson’s Security Now website. He features a weekly 35 minute podcast that explains the elegant design of inter networking at the same time pointing out, for example, a now obvious omission: the total absence of security on your Ethernet (LAN). The architects of the net never foresaw the need for security on your local area network. They assumed that anyone in your household or on the office LAN would be trustworthy. Read: There isNO inherant security built in, nada, zip, zilch! A WiFi access point is configured, by default (go figure), as public. It is therefore wide open and subject to eavesdropping aka man in the middle. The only way to lock down your network is to keep the unworthy out. Take an hour and become informed. Activate the WPA encryption for your router. Piggybackers know your network ID. It broadcasts the universal piggyback invitation code signal: Linksys 😉
New!
This demonstrates a WordPress and Gallery2 mashup. Gallery2 is a standalone photo album server that is integrated with WordPress. It is possible to navigate seamlessly between the two applications thanks to WPG2. Here’s a nifty tool for image choosing. ToDo: Locate a theme plugin to tie Wp and G2 ascetically.