Friday, 30 November, 2001. 07:15:41 AMGeorge Harrison is dead. Whenever I hear his name I remember the song
"Something" that he wrote, and also the collaboration with Tom Petty, Bob
Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison known as the Travelling Wilburys. That
was one fantastic record, and it's got a
great story
behind it. It's a shame that Roy Orbison died, because it would have been
great to have a few more records from the Wilburys.
Friday, 30 November, 2001. 04:50:27 AMI've been building my plane for a couple days now, and I have the fuselage
completed up to the point where the engine needs to be installed. The wings
are both built, and they look very straight to me. I wanted to cut the
wing spars down and join the two wings, but the Dremel makes a lot of noise,
and Alex is sleeping. I'll do it tomorrow.
Thursday, 29 November, 2001. 03:17:25 AMSomething I posted on Slashdot was moderated highly, so I'm preserving it
here. The main story was about how Wil Wheaton was on "The Weakest Link"
and how he donated his earnings to the EFF. The person to whom I was
replying said that Wil could have found a better charity to donate the
winnings to. Here's my reply:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your comments reflect a common sentiment, but it's not logical to take that position. Here's why:
1) First statement (yours) summed up neatly: why play for charity A when charity B appears to address a more pressing need. That is where you stopped thinking about it and reached a conclusion.
2) The conclusion was premature: one can go further - why play for charity B when charity C is addressing an even more pressing need. But that's not the end of it either.
3) The set of all charities is finite, meaning that if you continually favor the charity that address the more important need, then eventually you will find THE charity that addresses the MOST important need. That is where you stop. Give them your money.
4) Unfortunately, that situation leads to starvation. If you accept the first idea as true, (the one that you offered) then only one charity can logically be funded. Obviously, this is a far worse situation than we intended,
5) Therefore, we must reject the original premise as leading to an undesirable outcome, and therefore flawed for purposes of efficiently distributing money to charity.
The insult "get a life" is similarly flawed. At the end of the chain of thinking, one must live as the finest human being ever, and to be any lesser earns the "get a life" smackdown. One could offer my argument that I gave above as a logical retort. Or, one could simply offer a middle finger and a "hearty colloquialism".
Wednesday, 28 November, 2001. 04:04:11 PMI bought a Great Planes PT-40 yesterday, and I was up until 4:30 AM working
on it. It's easily the best kit I have ever bought. All the pieces are die
cut and are interlocking. I'm also building the entire thing with cyanoacrylate
and
epoxy which makes the thing go together without as much clamping and waiting
as the old aliphatic resin glues required. It's been 11 years since I last
flew an R/C aircraft, so I'm looking forward to flying this one. I've got
an older O.S. .40 engine at my parent's house in Ionia, as well as an O.S. .20
engine. The .40 is perfect for this model. My old radio won't work, because
it's AM, and it uses the pre-1991 frequencies. In a little town without a
lot of pagers and other devices there wasn't any interference. Here in Austin
I will need to get an FM radio with the right frequencies. There's a flying
club in town that I will join. It's also nice to have a hobby shop 10 minutes
away, instead of having to drive an hour over to Lansing to pick up a package
of hinges or something trivial. The only problem that I will have is storage.
My attic is fine for now, but when it gets hot I will have to figure out
something else to do.
Sunday, 25 November, 2001. 12:47:08 AMMy account at startrekmail.com is going away, so I went to mail.com to find
another e-mail address. I am pleased to announce that my new spam collector
e-mail address will soon be pdrap@minister.com.
Sunday, 25 November, 2001. 12:38:19 AMA deer was hit by a car about 6 PM in front of my house. I heard the noise
and looked outside. The deer was staggering around in the middle of the
street, then it sat down in Art's yard. I went outside to take a closer look
and it jumped up and ran away. It didn't look too bad, so maybe it was
just stunned. We've got way too many deer around here.
Saturday, 24 November, 2001. 03:14:20 PMSomebody named Harold Reid e-mailed me a few days ago with three attachments
containing a ridiculous speech given in Congress. He ignored my reply,
so I sent him two documents of my own. He responded to that mail, so maybe
he'll talk to me.
I don't understand why some people will send me mails, and then ignore my
responses. Don't they see that's a cowardly way to talk to people? It's a
simple matter to send out mails to those you disagree with, and then delete
all the replies to avoid having to defend your own ideas. A person who has
confidence in their ideas will not fear a discussion about them. If you are
right, then you gain debate practice. If you are wrong, then you gain something
even more valuable.
Thursday, 22 November, 2001. 04:28:34 PMAlex and I are going over to the Stice's for Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, 20 November, 2001. 04:25:13 PMSector 7 got the AT&T project. They need me to work on it. Unemployment just
might be over. I have much to buy now. Sushi for dinner tonight.
Tuesday, 20 November, 2001. 01:13:39 PMI just repaired a corrupted filesystem on my computer. Things weren't too bad.
This is only the second time that I had that problem. The last time was in
1998. I wonder if the new 2.4.14 kernel is causing problems.
Tuesday, 20 November, 2001. 03:05:06 AMFox News is reporting that the Department of Defense is compiling a list of
targets in Iraq. It seems that they are next.
Tuesday, 20 November, 2001. 02:15:45 AMToday was the start of a new bull market, defined by a level 20% over the
market lows, combined with 60 days of continuous gains. This would be the
11th bull market since WWII. This is good news if it can be maintained. New
capital would help the unemployment rate go down, and a good market helps to
sustain consumer confidence. The other thing that I think is needed right now
is a good Christmas season for businesses.
Sunday, 18 November, 2001. 05:32:44 AMThe clear spot is gone now. It was spectacular while it lasted.
Sunday, 18 November, 2001. 05:19:09 AMYES!!! There is a clearing right over my house, and I'm seeing about a dozen
Leonids every minute. This is a really nice display. I don't know how the
rest of the club is making out at the Canyon of the Eagles, but I'm glad I
decided to stay in Austin. I'm going back outside now.
Saturday, 17 November, 2001. 04:34:21 PMThe Leonids are expected to have a great show tonight, and it's cloudy.
Wednesday, 14 November, 2001. 09:56:31 PMI've successfully updated a test Debian 2.2 system to use a 2.4 series
kernel. The device drivers that I will write are going to use the 2.4
kernels. Because that update went smoothly, I will do that update to my
main computer.
Tuesday, 13 November, 2001. 04:03:40 PMBad news: An A300 crashed in New York Yesterday.
Good News: Kabul has fallen. Men are shaving their beards, and women are
appearing in public without the complete coverage that the Taliban required.
Music is heard in the streets, and the national radio station is broadcasting
again.
Monday, 12 November, 2001. 06:30:58 PMI visited Sector 7 today. So far, no more projects. There are many IBM projects
that are expected to come our way in January when they get funded.
Traditionally there is a slowdown in the 4th quarter, so this isn't really
the result of a bad economy. Once funds are released in January, I should be
back to work. Meanwhile, I'm still looking for other contracts so I can
work before then.
Wednesday, 07 November, 2001. 09:51:56 PMThere's something about
a woman who demonstrates her insanity
in a creative way that I can't resist.
Wednesday, 07 November, 2001. 09:26:39 PMI've purchased the O'Reilley book "Linux Device Drivers". Tonight I'm going
to put together a skeleton for my driver.
Tuesday, 06 November, 2001. 09:13:01 PMThere is a new major section to the website, called "Linux Device Drivers". I'm umemployed right now, and jobs for experienced C++, C, Linux, UNIX, Java, etc.
programmers are very short. On the other hand, I can find many jobs that
ask for device driver writers. So, I'm going to learn how to write Linux
Device Drivers by researching the subject on the internet and writing one.
The Linux Device Driver section is going to contain everything that I've
learned about the subject.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 11:40:38 PMMy job search has expanded. I've tripled the number of websites I hit, and
I'm going to be contacting companies directly more frequently. So far, I've
found only 3 suitable job prospects. In good times I would have had hundreds
of prospects.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 07:56:26 PMThe meetings I had today aren't going to produce a job very quickly. I met
with Bruce Werner and his partner Dhillon. Neither of them have any immediate
job prospects. I also met with Suzanne Stephen, and she told me that the Red
Hat 7.1 requirement is quite strict. She also doesn't have any immediate
prospects, but she will show my resume to her clients that use UNIX. Hopefully
one of them will be interested.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 05:11:24 AMAll the photos are annotated now. I'm ready to demonstrate that I have some
proficiency with Kylix.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 04:37:27 AMEverything is working perfectly now. The thumbnail page looks good, and the
annotations are appearing with every photo.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 04:10:08 AMThe annotations are working now. I noticed a problem with the formatting of
the thumbnails, so I'll fix that too.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 03:14:00 AMI've got a meeting with Bruce Werner tomorrow at 12:30. His business partner
Dillion is going to be in town (from San Antonio). I hope that one of these
threads that I'm pulling on will lead to a job. It's just plain boring sitting
at home.
I talked to George Chapman a couple days ago to get his reference. He told me
that Sector 7's business should pick up soon, which is pretty much what
everyone there has been telling me. I really like that company, and I'd like
to work for them again in the future. But for now, I've got to get another
contract and make some money. There's too many things I want to buy and do.
First thing after I get my job: buy some plywood. I'm going to build an 8 inch
Dobsonian telescope. The optics will come from Orion, most likely, but the
rest of it will be hand built.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 03:13:13 AMI'm not sure that Alex gave me my cold. She got one just after I did, so
maybe I gave it to her.
Monday, 05 November, 2001. 03:11:49 AMI've got the photo annotation utility done. The project went very smoothly
and touched on many parts of Kylix. I've got to build a database demo, since
that's very important and my utility didn't touch that part. I am now
integrating the annotations into the website.
Sunday, 04 November, 2001. 08:30:20 PMEverybody loves a man with a whole lotta
opinions.
Friday, 02 November, 2001. 05:23:06 PMvespertine: Pertaining to or appearing in the evening. That's me.
Friday, 02 November, 2001. 05:18:07 PMI've got another bad cold. Alex gave me this one.
Friday, 02 November, 2001. 05:05:27 PMI'm writing a small photo annotation utility with Kylix. When a new tool
needs to be learned, the only way to do it is to build something. The
photo annotation tool will be incorporated into this website. Currently the
photographs do not have any captions.
Friday, 02 November, 2001. 02:51:32 AMI'm learning Kylix in preparation for the possible interview next week. Kylix
is the Linux port of Borland's Delphi product. It works very much like other
development environments such as Visual Basic. The main difference is that
it uses Pascal as the underlying language rather than Basic. Even if I don't
get the interview and the job, Kylix is a very useful tool for developing
screen prototypes and small applications.
Thursday, 01 November, 2001. 06:30:40 PMI have a shot at a job as a Linux Applications Programmer for an
unknown company, contracting through Hall-Kineon. The client has some very
specific requirements, including specific Linux distributions, educational
requirements, and Kylix. I'm not sure why they are so specific, but I think
that if I can manage to get in front of the client I can address each of their
separate points and convince them to hire me. I meet with Hall-Kineon on
Monday.