I now have successfully written a PHP program that goes to another website, downloads any number of tif files (one test used 48), combines them into a single tif file, converts the tiff to a single pdf file (48 tiffs become a 48 page pdf), and presents the new single pdf and single tif to the enduser for downloading or viewing. This was a nightmare and has cost me dearly. It is done and I can move on.
Category: Daily Life
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
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This Big Small World
Six years ago Cathy and I walked through West Town Mall. We had a wonderful store called The World of Knowledge. Outside an employee was playing with devil sticks. I borrowed them, showed off, and gave some advice. Apparently she remembered, because six years later we met again at Atomic Tumor’s party and she pointed saying, "ow ow ow! I know you!". It was a good moment. Now she is in the hospital and holding onto life by a thread.
nurses are telling me that her vitals can’t support life for long, that I told my 9 year old son as lightly as I could that his mother might die, that, despite HOW HARD I TRY NOT TO I can’t help figureing out how I’d word her obiturary on this stupid web page because I might just need to, I start to break down. [Source]
Head over to AtomicTumor, give a shout in the chat box found in the sidebar, leave some supportive comments, and say some prayers, send some positive energy, and think good thoughts.
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So this is what a Warner Brothers cartoon character feels like!
Anvils are falling on my head. Repeatedly! So my CPU fan dies on my Windows development box. I get laughed out of every store. "haha! Socket 7! They quit using those like 8 years ago!" Ring. Ring. "Honey. Don’t get mad. The power went out and the Internet isn’t coming back on." My head hangs so low that it drags the pavement as I drive home. More anvils. And a cliff. Neep neeep! Oh. I get home and the Internet has come back but the punchline is that my Linux development server didn’t like the power outage and is not coming back to life. That’s the train that comes out of nowhere to run me down.
I don’t see the grass of cubeville as greener. Frankly, I don’t care if cubeville is tumbleweeds and dirt. I am ready to return to the corporate joke. This computer swashbuckler is ready to lay down his sword. After this past decade, there is nothing you could lay in front of me that could phase me.
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Why do they have to eat?
I think I’ve used that title before! Some days, I just wish dinner would magically appear without the same script: What’s for dinner? I don’t know. What do you want? Well if you guys are eatting that, I’m having Ramen. Mac and cheese. Steak, Taquitoes, McDonalds. I only eat meat. Vegetables? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Chick Fillet! Yuueck. Can I eat my room? Candy!
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Wow! A little bit of costume!
So last night I’m taking Minnie Mouse’s picture with a nice person giving out candy and suddenly I have the urge to take a picture for Cathy and BusyMom. Supergirl and the Slut Friends came running up as I was taking Minnie Mouse’s picture. The buxom superhero was having trouble slowing down because her secret weapon, bulbus breasts, obviously kept her off balance. Her identity is kept secret by the glaring cleavage protruding from her plasticized costume; not a mortal man can possibly make eye contact with her!
Suddenly a battle of good versus evil rages within me. My finger is on the shutter button of the camera. It is ready to fire. I merely need to raise the lense a few inches and push the button. Supergirl and the Slut Friends are moving like coke fiends at an 80s party hosted by a Columbian drug lord. They move almost in a blur in their mission to pillage as much chocolate and sugar as possible to fuel their teen metabolisms. The decent people of this nice, upper-middle class neighborhood laugh and talk with their friends in lawn chairs on their porches surrounded by professionally landscaped yards. How will they judge me if I take the picture! I visualize the light merriment of the neighborhood changing to anger as clouds billow over, the houses take sharp angled Tim Burtonesque shapes as thunder roars and beers are dropped for pitchforks and torches, and the adults chant "pervert! pedophile!" I might get away with taking the picture; afterall, I am showing my horns.
Supergirl is first to reach the candy bucket at the porch. As she leans forward to grab some treats right in front of me I am sudden aware that it is colder outside than I originally assessed. Happy doesn’t appropriately describe the jolly superteen. "Perky" would be far more apropos. Snap the picture! As a parent, I am thinking a plasticized, hard shell of a costume probably was not her best choice. Perhaps something more form fitting. And a bra. Or two.
In the end I could not bring myself to take the picture. I would not want to give the FBI anything that could be construed as child porn. Of course, as we approach the next house, one woman and five or six beer guzzling men are guffawing and talking about Supergirl’s boobs.
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From the mouths of babes
Mom: "Sarah wants to go to school on a 10°C day in short sleeves and no jacket."
Dad: "If you are going to be dumb, you have to be tough." -
What is stress?
Stress is when the pressure builds up so much that you cannot stop shaking, it is hard to focus because your field of vision is reduced, you cannot concentrate enough to read a single sentence and comprehend it, short term memory vanishes, and ambivalence takes hold. Then the dominoes fall.
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Of Grasshoppers
Student: Nothing is going right today.
Master: Pick one thing that cannot possibly go wrong and do it next. Repeat. -
Got my Round Tuit
I finally took the steps necessary to get an eye sore off the driveway. I am experiencing a little self-doubt as I wonder if I did all I could or all I should have. Movin on!
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Today’s Programming Hell
Today I am whimpering and crying while trying to resolve this lovely error message: "GPL Ghostscript 8.54: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1" Right now I think that either ImageMagick is not creating the eps or ps files in a way that Ghostscript likes or that I am missing some fonts. Possibly, I need to add some steps to building the eps file with ImageMagick. Of course it could be something mundanely stupid like not having the path set.
Update! A clue! A clue! Found while trying eps2eps
Error: /invalid font in findfont
Operand stack:
Times-Roman Font Times-Roman 976412 Times-Roman –nostringval– Times-Roman NimbusRomNo9L-Regu Courier NimbusMonL-Regu
Execution stack:
%interp_exit .runexec2 –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– 2 %stopped_push –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– false 1 %stopped_push 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop –nostringval– 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop .runexec2 –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– 2 %stopped_push –nostringval– –nostringval– 1 4 %oparray_pop 2 4 %oparray_pop –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– false 1 %stopped_push 5 5 %oparray_pop –nostringval– –nostringval– –nostringval– 1 -1 1 –nostringval– %for_neg_int_continue
Dictionary stack:
–dict:1122/1686(ro)(G)– –dict:0/20(G)– –dict:88/200(L)– –dict:88/200(L)– –dict:17/17(ro)(G)– –dict:1122/1686(ro)(G)–
Current allocation mode is local
Last OS error: 2
Current file position is 5709
GPL Ghostscript 8.54: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1Joy.
Update: I bet this is going to help: wget http://mirror3.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/current/ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz
See also. That worked! -
Special Moments and Rituals – Evan Shaving
Evan and I share a ritual most mornings. I use an electric shaver and when I turn it on Evan comes running. It is his job to sit on my left hip and hold the container for the shaver. He plays with the paperwork that I’ve never thrown away and uses the cleaning brush to mimic the motions I am making on my face. He smiles being with Daddy and seems to like the feel of the cleaning brush over his cheeks. His dimple shows big while spending a few quality moments with Dad and I love it!
It is my goal to establish a psuedo-daily ritual with each of the children. With the older children, it might be reading a chapter aloud from a book or cooking a meal together.
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Halloween Redux
Today, Amy will go to school dressed like Minnie Mouse. We did it last Wednesday and walked into the school to see most people not in costume. Fortunately, Amy had an extra shirt in the car. Two or three children remained in costume, one with hair dyed orange, as the teachers explained the date had changed and we must have missed the memo. Amy was having an overtired tantrum and part of me just wanted to take her home. I also didn’t want her to feel bad being one of the only children (at first I thought ‘the only’) in costume but I really do not think 4 year old minds think things like that until adults put such thoughts of self-doubt and insecurity into their minds. I think she would have proudly shown off her costume despite the other children. That’s the correct, confident response we should maintain all our lives. I hope I can instill such confidence. I don’t see it in Sarah.
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Doug’s Mantras
The most repeated phrase the children hear from me recently is "Pay attention to the world around you." Most frequently this is directed to Noah as he plays a game or gets too deeply into a book while Evan is nearby making a mess, getting stuck, or spilling something.
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Long Shelf Life – Just Not THAT Long
I decided to clean out some of our kitchen cabinets. Just found 811g of Nestle Carnation Instant Breakfast powdered drink mix. Expired Sept 2001. Never opened. I guess we really don’t like this product.