Category Archives: Administrative

It’s Always Something

I’ve been spending the weekend getting stuff working after the hurricane.

I had to reaim the satellite dish, which turned out to be a major PITA, because the mast wasn’t (and has never been) vertical. So I had to shim up the base that it was attached to to get plumb, then reattach the dish, and reaim it. It was still tough, because the elevation indicator seemed to be miscalibrated, but if I’d had to do it with a cockeyed mast, it would have been much worse.

Then I started having computer problems. I have a brand new motheboard, Sempron CPU and gigabyte of DDR 4200 RAM in my main (Windows) machine, and it’s been fine until last night, when I got up this morning to find that it woke up dead. I rebooted, and it came up, sans mouse, and after it was on a while, I started to get strange patterns on the screen af which point it locked up again. After trying this several times, it eventually quit booting at all.

Anyone have any theories? The problem is that this is the first mobo of its generation that I’ve bought, so I’ve got no other processors or memory to swap out to see if they’re the problem. The only thing that I can hope is that the video card has died, which I can test with another.

I’m posting this from my Fedora box, if anyone is wondering. I also have a couple laptops, so it’s not urgent–just annoying.

[Update on Sunday]

I finally got around to playing with this. I swapped out the video card, and it booted right up…

Back In Business

I got home this morning, and after doing a little rewiring on a phone jack, seemed to get everything up, including DSL.

Driving home from Fort Lauderdale International, I was impressed at the damage. You’ve all heard the expression, “Gee, it looks like a hurricane came through here.” Well, it really, really looks like a hurricane came through here. Lots of dead and uprooted trees, bereft of leaves, toppled palms, skeletons of billboards, piles of debris. And it’s been almost two weeks since the storm. The house is all right, other than a lot of damaged foliage, and screens blown out on the pool patio. Fortunately, the frame is in good shape, so it’s just a matter of screen replacement.

Now to catch up on a couple weeks of business around here.

Back To Florida

I’m flying home tonight from LA on a red eye. We got power back last night (ahead of schedule, which was nice), but I don’t know if I’ll have Internet. If I do, I’ll check in tomorrow, and if not, I’ll check in when I do, so if you don’t hear from me, that will probably be why.

Market Feedback

I just noticed that I have a very skinny blog, relative to almost everyone else.

No, it hasn’t lost weight–we designed it that way years ago, to be friendly to as many browsers and screen resolutions as possible. It also makes for nice square paragraphs in posts, as opposed to long, wide, spaghetti-ish things like some other people’s posts who I could mention.

But it wastes a lot of real estate on the screen for those using modern, large monitors with high resolution. So, should I do a redesign? (I’m thinking about this anyway, as part of running ads, and establishing some prominent ad space).

Hurricane Status

For those who are wondering, I talked briefly to Patricia last night, when she managed to get her cell phone to work momentarily. She and the house both weathered the storm well, but the yard is a mess, and we have no power and for now no phone service. I think the problem with the phones may just be that we need a phone that doesn’t need power (also, the business line is running outside, and it may have been blown out of the box, so she’ll check that tomorrow).

I talked longer to her tonight, and she’s just getting ready to live in the nineteenth century for a few days, or weeks, until power is restored. I was planning to fly back on Friday, but Fort Lauderdale Airport is still closed, with no word on when it will be open. Miami’s open, but that’s not where my ticket is, so it would be more costly. Also, if I go back, I won’t be able to work there without power or communications, so not only will my client not get my services, but I won’t get paid, so I’ll probably be extending my stay in California, as much as I miss home and her, and want to get back and help her.

Anyway, no flooding, no injuries, no damage to the house. We are inconvenienced, but blessed, and will contribute to those less fortunate.

Living In The Future

Just a note to say that I’m waiting for my plane to LA, and that Fort Lauderdale airport has wireless capability throughout the terminal. They also have power outlets next to the seats so I don’t have to run down my battery, and can save it for the plane trip. Once they have wireless in the airplanes, I’ll never get away from the blogging ball and chain…

Back In Town

But just for a day or so. I got back yesterday, but I’m on a flight for California this afternoon, where I’ll be working, attending a workshop on DoD responsive launch initiatives, and going to the Space Frontier Conference this weekend (which you should attend as well, if you’re interested in this stuff). Blogging may be light.

I’m also keeping the house buttoned up in case Wilma pays a visit while I’m gone (though Patricia will be here). I had hoped that I could take down the shutters, and take down the ugly steel front door, and put on the pretty one, but I guess it will have to wait until the end of October now. This has been a long hurricane season.

Off The Air

I’m going on vacation to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I’ll have a laptop, so I can do some writing, but networking may be problematic. I’ll certainly be back by the seventeenth. Meanwhile, lots of good stuff in the blogroll to the left.

The Storms Just Keep On Coming

I expect that we’ll be seeing Greek alphabet names within a couple weeks–there are only four names left.

All of the computer models show Rita heading through the Florida Straights, which means just some wind and rain for Palm Beach County, but we’ll keep an eye out and be ready to shutter anyway. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that this thing has much chance of hitting New Orleans, though–all of the tracks show it heading farther south, down near the Mexico/Texas border. It might hit Texas, or even western Louisiana, but eastern Louisiana looks pretty unlikely to me.

I’ll sure be glad when this hurricane season is over.

[Update at noon eastern]

Just got our first heavy shower from the outer bands.

Busy

I’m supporting a deliverable to NASA, and will be tied up all day (and much of the evening) on it, after which I’ll be taking a red-eye flight back to Florida tonight. Probably not much posting until late tomorrow, Eastern time. There is a lot to blog about when I get time, though, if you check out the usual suspects over at The Space Review, Space Politics, Space Transport News, and Mars Blog most of which will have links to other interesting stuff.