When the 4 year old is up before 7am, it’s a sign that a rough day is ahead.
Category: Daily Life
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
Returning to my old ways
Once upon a time more than a decade ago, I would rise every morning between 4 and 5 am to begin my day. I’m marking today as the day I reinstated that awesome habit.
Throb throb throb
It is so easy to become so consumed in thinking about one’s situation or task at hand or the thing that needs to be done or the impossible deadline that we become frozen, unable to do anything about that which needs to be done. So much easier said than done but the simple solution is to stop thinking about it and simply do it.
Today stress has left my head fuzzy, foggy, in a cloud. A rare state for me. I have never taken pain killers before but I feel like I could use some today. I’ll settle for a fist full of a Tylenol/aspirin cocktail.
There was peace
I drifted through space
Then I open my eyes
The ground rushed up
To smack me in the face
Leaving me with nothing
But a dirty taste of reality.
Finally, success.
After getting a technological butt kicking all weekend, at 9:30pm on Sunday night, I have achieved something. Can I have my weekend back now?
Protected: … — …
From the mouths of babes
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad doesn’t like me when I talk with an outside voice."
Me: "That’s not true. I always like you."
Evan: "But you don’t like me when I has an outside voice."
Me: "I always like you. It’s the loud noise I don’t like."
Evan: "No. You don’t like me."
Me: "I love you! I like you. I don’t like your outside voice inside the house."
Evan: "You don’t like me when I use my outside voice."
Me: "I like you! I like you no matter what you do! I will always like you. I don’t like the noise."
Evan: "Oh, you don’t like my outside voice."
This conversation felt endless. I remember holding Evan and trying to rock him to sleep. I looked into his eyes and told him, "I cannot wait to have conversations with you!" I love talking with Evan. Still, some of our conversations leave me shaking my head and left in disbelief at the words spilling from my mouth.
Morning E-mail Omens
When I open email in the morning, sometimes the only rational response is, "Oh hell. What did I write?"
The Danger of a Laptop in the Kitchen
This morning I am simultaneously fixing the code for a client’s website and my children’s lunches. I fully expect them to come home to say that someone took a byte out of their food.
Redneck Lawncare Update
In hindsight, putting a clutch on the blade to keep the drive shaft from breaking probably would have been wise. I wonder what I can do with an extra 30 cc 2 stroke engine.
Update: It was suggested that I make a go cart! I could do a motorized skateboard.
The Hard Drive Chronicles
After moving the 60 GB hard drive to the Linux box, I was able to get a raw copy of all data without errors. If Ghost fails, I will try either 1) formatting the 500 GB hard drive and then copying the data and setting the master boot record or 2) installing a fresh copy of Windows then overwriting the installation with all data from the 60 GB hard drive (I know the problems with that approach). If Ghost and the raw copy approach fail, I will simply start over fresh.
Modified weed eater
Homeowner stupidity
I have found a sharp 7″ circular saw blade. It is clearly marked "max rpms 5,400" and I have attached it to a weed eater with a max rpm of 12,500. Why should this matter? To make it interesting, the shaft diameter is smaller than the hole in the blade so I imagine I might get some wobble. There is no safety mechanism to keep the blade from being thrown. My legs will only occupy roughly 35 degrees of the circle so if the blade gets thrown there’s a good 325 degrees left for the blade to fly into safety. Of course, I’ll be pushing the blade into brush so that probably increases the chance that the blade will come back toward my ankles. We’ll see. Next post from the ER.
The Hard Drive Chronicles
The saga continues. The new Hitachi 500 gb drive tests fine. The old 60 gb drive has been thoroughly exercised with chkdsk /f /r. Clonezilla failed to make the clone off the image I created previously so I tried a disk to disk clone and Clonezilla failed there too. Even ntfsclone –rescue bombs on the bad sector. I can still see all the data on the 60 gb hard drive so I’m mounting it in my Linux box and will copy everything from the hard drive to a backup drive. Next step will be a last ditch attempt using Ghost and then finally I will simply reinstall Windows and my critical applications on the 500 GB hard drive. This ends today.
Bush Hogging
I own a John Deere weed eater. They used to sell a variety of snap on parts for it like a chainsaw extension, edger and so forth. I never bought any. Last time I was at the John Deere store the sales person responded with surprise, "Are you sure it’s a John Deere?" Apparently they got out of that business a long time ago.
My yard is overgrown. I have about an acre and the brush is shoulder high in places. Using a machete is slow going and painful. Using a lawn mower guarantees bent blades. Renting a bush hog for the weekend has been my desire but is a bit costly and just hasn’t happened. I need to be able to take brief breaks on the yard and pull this down over time. The heavy duty trim line just isn’t working out. For every 5 feet of brush I knock down I have to spend 5 minutes fidgeting with the line or reloading the spool.
The solution? A brush blade! These are about $25 if I can find one which I doubt I could today. Instead, I believe my Dremel and bench grinder are going to help me repurpose a rotary saw or table saw blade into a wicked brush destroying weapon. If I do this correctly, I won’t end up with shards of metal thrown at high speeds into my ankles and the hill out back will have a better chance of being used for sledding this winter.
Read more at Homeowner stupidity, and Modified weed eater, and Redneck Lawncare Update.
Bad start
It is 7:30am on a holiday weekend and already I am having a hard day.
