Thursday, 30 September, 2004. 03:45:28 PMToday is the 1st anniversary of IBM's acquisition of Sector 7.
Monday, 27 September, 2004. 10:08:15 PMThis weekend I replaced all the parts on a toilet in my house, because the
flapper valve started leaking and I was concerned about the condiiton of
some of the washers and other parts. Better safe than sorry. The water
supply valve was the type that has the built-on supply pipe, and the
valve needed replacing too. The wall had to be opened, because the compression
fitting on the valve was not going to come off the copper supply pipe.
Taking the copper pipes apart was trouble, because I couldn't drain
the line completely. It seems that the shut-off valve up by the road won't
close completely, so a trickle of water through the pipe prevented it from
getting hot enough to melt the soldier joint. The solution to this problem
is to stuff the copper pipe with bread. If the pipe is packed full of
bread, that will stop the water flow long enough to heat the pipe and
get the new pieces soldiered on. When the water is turned back on, the
bread washes right out.
Monday, 27 September, 2004. 04:41:18 PMThis week on _60 Minutes_ Mike Wallace interviewed the Fox News television
personality Bill O'Reilly. Among other things, O'Reilly said that he
doesn't consider himself to be a conservative, and that he holds quite
a lot of views that aren't conservative at all. He is opposed to the death
penalty, is in favor of gay marriage, conditionally in favor of gay
adoption, and pro-gun control. Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News is
known for being combative, and even as a guest on other programs he
has shouted down others who disagree with him. He is a favorite of
conservatives, which is strange considering his position on some
conservative hot topics. It is tempting to conclude that conservatives
enjoy his program because they have an affinity for bullies.
And that brings me to another thing that happened this weekend. Alex
and I put up a Kerry/Edwards campaign sign in our yard on Saturday. It
stood for about 8 hours before some morons kicked it down and ripped it.
Wednesday, 22 September, 2004. 12:12:39 PMAt the current rate that my spam load is growing at, this time next year
I will be receiving more than 4000 spam messages every day on average.
In all of 2003 I received about 12000 spam messages. On my worst spam day
so far I received 1300 messages. My spam filter is tuned quite well now,
so only 1/4 of 1% of all spam messages slip through.
Sunday, 12 September, 2004. 02:07:35 PMI'm thinking of changing the way my website works. Right now, it resides
in the filesystem, and a Python scripts goes over it to generate a static
copy of the website, which is synchronized with the web server. Most
websites, particularly web logs, generate pages dynamically. This would
make maintenance of the website easier in the long term, but would complicate
how I update the website from two different computers and synchonize them.
Wednesday, 08 September, 2004. 09:46:53 PMThe article on the
Edmund Scientifics Astroscan is complete.
Wednesday, 08 September, 2004. 12:02:12 PMI just watched the reentry of Genesis on NASA TV. The parachute didn't come
out, and it impacted the ground at full speed. It's in one piece though, so
the experiment might still be OK.
Wednesday, 08 September, 2004. 12:46:21 AMPhotos from July now in the photo album.
Tuesday, 07 September, 2004. 12:23:39 PMKristiana's first tooth popped out on Saturday. It's the front lower tooth on
the left.
Sunday, 05 September, 2004. 12:40:54 PMThe United States is very fortunate to have escaped the curse of a
politicized military, and the endless morass of coups, despotism, and
martial law that plagues other nations with a military that owes allegiance
to one political party over another.
But that could change very
quickly it seems. It's a bad idea to let active duty military personnel
serve as partisan delegates. Whatever happened to the
DOD directive prohibiting such things? More information at
Kuro5hin.