My parents left for Michigan this morning. It was a lot of fun having them visit, and they enjoyed seeing their new granddaughter. Kristiana is gaining weight quickly now, and seems to have more control over her arms and legs. I'm going to have the rest of the week off work, so I'll be working on the tile in the bathroom. It's coming along pretty well, and the end is in sight. Almost time to remove the sinks and put tile on the tub enclosure.
Monday, 29 December, 2003. 06:11:07 PM
This weekend I tore apart my Argus C3 camera and cleaned it. It's working perfectly now, and loaded with film. It's not possible to date the camera accurately, but it's probably from the early 1950's because it lacks an accessory hot shoe. The serial number is 7 digits, and that supposedly implies that it's post-WWII.
Monday, 29 December, 2003. 02:07:37 PM
Been busy with the baby. My parents are also here visiting until Wednesday which has been nice.
Thursday, 18 December, 2003. 04:52:56 PM
A FedEx DC-10 caught fire, ran off the runway, and burned at the Memphis airport. Nobody was injured. That DC-10 was tail number N364FE, first flown on 1/18/71. It was the 4th DC-10 ever built, and probably the oldest one flying. Originally, the aircraft was sold to United Airlines as tail number N1801U.
This is the photo of the aircraft landing at Sky Harbor in Phoenix.
And here's the plane in the United Airlines livery.
N1801U was a relatively famous aircraft and there are links all around the net. There was even a hobby model kit made of that plane by United Airlines.
Tuesday, 16 December, 2003. 02:34:59 PM
The dynamic library loader used in linux (part of glibc) has some neat tricks. One of these is that you can set an environment variable called
LD_DEBUG
to show how symbols (variables and functions, for example) are resolved for a dynamic executable. This can sometimes help resolve obscure bugs where your application isn't doing what you expect (assuming it is caused by symbols being resolved differently to what you were expecting).
This is very useful if you get segmentation violations or aborts for a program - this can sometimes be caused by linking against the wrong version of a library. This is also a really good way to understand what happens when you run any program! It has some self-documentation - for the impatient, you can do
$ LD_DEBUG=help /path/to/some/dynamic/executable
eg
$LD_DEBUG=help ls
prints out:
Valid options for the LD_DEBUG environment variable are:
libs display library search paths
reloc display relocation processing
files display progress for input file
symbols display symbol table processing
bindings display information about symbol binding
versions display version dependencies
all all previous options combined
statistics display relocation statistics
help display this help message and exit
To direct the debugging output into a file instead of standard output a filename can be specified using the LD_DEBUG_OUTPUT environment variable.
Monday, 15 December, 2003. 01:17:16 AM
My sister asked me if I was getting any sleep with the baby, so wrote this to her:
Before the baby, I was telling everyone that I was prepared for the baby because I had my two little dogs. Everyone said that was nothing, a kid is a lot worse.
Now that Kristiana is here, I can speak with the authority of experience. Dogs are at least 3 times harder than a baby. Babies are a piece of cake, and we're both getting lots of sleep. Kristiana sleeps for about 3 hours between feedings at night, and when she craps her pants, she doesn't need a bath. Both of my dogs had to go out every hour for the first two months. I already told you how I slept on the floor with them. And if they had an accident, it wasn't a simple diaper change, it was a bath for a dog covered in dog poop. Yep, babies are officially easier than dogs.
Sunday, 07 December, 2003. 02:03:35 PM
Kristiana Angelitha Draper is here with us now!
Born December 7th, 3:15 AM
Weighing 7 lbs. 2 oz.
Saturday, 06 December, 2003. 05:42:52 PM
Things are moving along well. We're going to be leaving for the hospital in a half-hour or so.
Saturday, 06 December, 2003. 04:37:55 PM
Alex is still in labor. Things are getting pretty serious now. Everything's going very well.
Saturday, 06 December, 2003. 02:24:40 PM
Alex's labor is coming along just fine. We're still at home. We might go to the hospital late this afternoon.
Saturday, 06 December, 2003. 08:47:34 AM
No baby yet. Alex has been in labor since 2:30 this morning.
Friday, 05 December, 2003. 11:02:34 AM
No baby yet.
Thursday, 04 December, 2003. 10:40:06 PM
No baby yet.
Thursday, 04 December, 2003. 04:37:13 PM
No baby yet.
Wednesday, 03 December, 2003. 09:51:08 AM
No baby yet.
Wednesday, 03 December, 2003. 12:05:26 AM
No baby yet.
Tuesday, 02 December, 2003. 12:56:04 PM
No baby yet.
Tuesday, 02 December, 2003. 12:26:03 AM
Never thought I'd agree with Phyllis Schlafley about anything, but she's opposed to the ownership of uncopyrightable personal and legal databases by companies. Must be a sign of the end times.
Monday, 01 December, 2003. 12:55:42 PM
No baby yet.