MegaPatch Tuesday greets many with Windows XP’s auto-reboot nag-o-matic. You know it by this: Clicking “Later” means “Ask again in five minutes.” Whoever designed this had the philosophy that fixing their mistake is far more important than you’re getting work done. It’s also obvious they’ve never actually needed to do a presentation for important people. […]
Heisenberg Uncertainty Dialogs Read More »
After seven years of output, the HP ink jet printer had finally stopped working. Because it was never intended to be serviced by mortals, it was time to find a new one. Choosing a model can be as difficult as you want to make it because HP has an estimated six billion models. For once,
I repaired the broken gear and replaced the two electrical components. Saturday, I took apart the base and bowl holder to paint them. For bizarre reasons, the canary yellow with a black stripe down the middle was very appealing. I did part of the bowl holder, the tail cone and (though you can’t see it
Kitchenaid in progress Read More »
At a previous employer, we had a software utility, wcheckdb, whose purpose was to clean up all of the object database-cruft leftover from day-to-day use of the product. Its output was initially a series of cryptic diagnostics that only the lead engineer could appreciate. We often redirected these to a file. The program had a
Lather, rinse, reboot Read More »
My KitchenAid mixer had been making abnormal noises during the last few batches of cookies. This afternoon, while subjected to my bagel dough, it gave out entirely. Because I am: curious and cheap and middle-aged it would be a safe bet that I’ll take it apart to determine if I can fix it. If my
No, that’s not backwards. My three-month experiment was an unexpected failure. While WordPress is easy to install, feels very slick and has some innovative features (especially with Ajax plugins), there have been enough serious problems that I have gone to the effort to move back to MovableType. Tonight, I’ll highlight the three most serious problems
Migrating from WordPress to Movable Type (Part 1) Read More »
In a typical day, I receive about 200 emails, not including spam. If I am out of the office for any appreciable time, the email accumulates faster than I can deal with it. Thanks to concentrated effort, my work email’s inbox is at its smallest since … before I started. While the goal-oriented part of
Pigs ready for take-off Read More »
Java, the “write once, run anywhere” language marketed as salvation from programming faux pas*, has its own, manic updater for the runtime version. In their case, “updater” really means “install subsequent versions of itself.” For example, on my work machine, I noticed this: No, I don’t know what happened to Updates 7 and 8. According
Java: write once, update everywhere Read More »