Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

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Reasons to hate Windows

I run a legal copy of Windows XP and still use service pack 1. I like service pack 2 and put it on all new machines but this machine is a little too critical to my life to risk going to through the nightmares I heard that can happen when installing service pack 2. Granted, nothing bad should happen, however, if it can go bad with me it probably will at the absolute worst moment.

What’s this got to do with hating Windows? Today I accepted an update from Microsoft and since then every two hours I’ve had a window popup to notify me that on Oct 10, 2006 support for service pack 1 will end. Does this mean that every two hours between now and October 10th I’m going to have to deal with this message?! Not a smart way to do business. If I don’t want to secure my machine and if I want to deal with not being supported I should have that option without the nuisance!

A linux development environment sounds awfully nice right now.

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The Realtek 8201CL does not require a driver!

If you are using a motherboard with a built-in network adapter (like the Realtek 8201CL found on the MSI PM8M-V which is a Via P4M800) you don’t need to be looking for a driver for the 8201CL. Instead you need to look for the driver for the MAC chip embedded in the chipset. Ie. See your motherboard manufacturer specs and download area.


The Ethernet hardware consists of two parts: a PHY chip, and a MAC chip. It’s the MAC chip that requires the drivers. RTL8201x is a PHY only chip which does NOT need any driver at all. If you have RTL8201x in your computer system, there must be another MAC chip in the system too. Most likely, the MAC chip is embedded in the chipset. Please contact the board or computer provider to find out which MAC chip is in your system and how to get the drivers for it.

In my case the drivers needed to be for Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC.

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Let’s track a typical day

continuing…

10am-2pm: Some blogging and time wasting in here. A bunch of time was spent trying to get the drivers for the Windows 2000 professional client machine working. The networking driver and vga driver are still not working. Had some lunch. Visited briefly with the kids to straight and focus them on making dominoe races.

Need to get focused again…

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Let’s track a typical day.

Updated. The fact checker woke.

Thus far:

I overslept and woke at 4:305am. 4:30-55-5:30am was my freshening up time and making coffee. I’ve severely cut down on my coffee intake, going with no coffee days on end, since caffiene seems to aggrivate the BPV. Today I needed coffee.

5am-7:30am I avoid distractions and focus on programming a client’s web application. With web apps, so much can go on behind the scenes that the client can begin to think the developer isn’t working at all. Today is about producing visible results. I do some multitasking and during this time I also get Windows 2000 Professional installed on a client’s machine. I was having much difficulty because I couldn’t get the harddrive formated as the keyboard kept locking up on boot. Last night Evan crawls over and starts pushing buttons and stomping on the keyboard and I’ll be darned if he didn’t get the formatting software working in a couple minutes when I’d been trying for hours! The one year old is a computer prodigy!!

7:30-8 is some me time. Regrouping. Quick bite to eat and getting back to work.

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Let me off this ride!

A day or two ago it hit me. BPV! Benign Positional Vertigo for me comes on with extreme stress. It’s strange. I feel woozy. The room spins and I have trouble standing. Nothing I can do helps. I just have to wait until it subsides then try really hard to minimize my head movements. Granted, I could get some 25mg meclizine pills but I can’t afford the sleep right now.

Age: BPPV seem to have a predilection for the older population, with the average age of onset 51 years. It is rarely seen in persons younger than 35 years without a history of antecedent head trauma.

I wonder what head trauma I’ve had.

One of the most common causes of BPPV is head trauma. Although the true mechanisms are not exactly certain, the concussive forces presumably cause particles that reside in the vestibule to become displaced to the canal. Other factors that predispose individuals to BPPV include inactivity, acute alcoholism, major surgery, and CNS disease.

Oh. Thanks college!

Once treated, BPPV recurrence rate is between 5% and 15%.

Treated? I wonder if they mean canalith repositioning procedure (CRP). I suppose my chiropractor could do that.

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Oh Hell

For the record, the sign of the beast is probably 616 not 666. Of course to satisfy people’s devil interests, Wikipedia has notes on the Number of the Beast. The number 666 is so powerful that it causes such stupidity as renaming highways. US Route 666 was named in 1926 and had no problems for 77 years but in 2003 it was renamed to US Route 491.

A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.
…the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil’s prime number
…more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the “number of the beast,” or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book’s apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.

[Source, Religion News Blog, Beast’s real mark devalued to 616?]

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Net Neutrality Discussion – Tomorrow 7pm?

Anyone in Knoxville want to have an impromptu Net Neutrality brown bag type discussion? Borders in Turkey Creek is having its grand opening. How about we meet in the coffee shop at 7:00pm. We can chat for 45 minutes (give or take) then watch Todd Steed.

Todd Steed And Suns of Phere
June 3, 2006 8:00 PM
Knoxville, TN
Knoxville – Turkey Creek
The bands following is growing throughout the southeast. Their new CD is garnering super reviews for this rock n’ roll crew.

If the coffee shop is where all the activity is happening we can just meet there and take the discussion to another part of the store or the fountain outside.

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Seeking HVAC recommendations

I went into a Firestone not long ago and they had fans blowing all over the place. I inquired, "flood?" to which the salesperson responded, "Nope. 3rd time this year that the a/c has gone out. No one in Knoxville knows how to repair an air conditioner."

I concur with Mr. Firestone. Our a/c is out again. 9 years ago a low bidder sloppily installed the unit. It’s probably underpowered to begin with and I’m sure its reaching the end of its days. Has anyone had any good experiences with HVAC repair? I need referrals!

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Growing Up

The little boy next door just came over, knocked, and politely asked, "Could Amy come over and swim in my pool?" to which Amy grabbed her swim suit and went on her merry four year old way. This is the same boy that seems like only yesterday was standing naked in my driveway and would periodically just let himself in the house to play with toys.

Amy is growing so fast!

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Store your bullets out of the reach of toddlers!

I went upstairs and couldn’t believe my eyes. Mixed in with the toys scattered across the living room floor was a, um, er, a marital aid. Obviously a 1 year old dragged it out of a storage space and became disenchanted with the toy dropping it in the middle of everything to move onto less embarassing toys like kitchen knives.

Coming close to a recreation of a scene from Parenthood, I openly point out what I am holding to my wife while my children’s backs are to me. They of course whip around with a "What?!" response but I’m too quick. Good thing too because we have a policy in this household of "if you bring it up, you explain it!"

Asking, "What would Alan Shore do?" I reacted calmly, slipping the tool into my pocket, making eye contact with the wife, and calling Sarah to babysit for 3 minutes.

Now honey, your neck massager needs to be put somewhere different. And feel free to read all kinds of double entendre into that.

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6 inches from disaster

After picking up some groceries, I readied myself to head home in the Jeep with the top down. Let’s say the isle I was parked in is isle K. The exit from the parking lot is on isle L half way down. Naturally, you can drive all the way around or cut through. I was driving down isle K and remembered that the exit wasn’t at the end of the isle. In the seconds that it took for me to look to my right to see the exit in isle L a car materialized in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, swerved, and said something akin to a prayer (I’m sure St. Pete and I will debate that later). I’m a lane driver. He was a cut through driver.

Here I sit with my bumper a mere 6 inches from his fender. We make eye contact. Critical choices are made. The outcome? I smile, give a wave, verbalize "you ok?", he waves back, I drive around him completing isle K and loop around for isle L, he cuts through to isle L but waits for me to complete my loop allowing me to exit first. No one hurt. No one angry.

I still contend that the lines are painted in the parking lot both to give order to maximizing the number of parked cars AND give direction to prevent chaotic accidents. If you are going to cut across a parking lot at least recognize that you are doing something unpredictable and keep a sharp eye.