No subject post! I bought a safe today. We thought it would be a good idea. Fireproof and waterproof. I can store my server backup drive in it. This is a good thing. Of course, I have to get said server backup drive first. I figured I’d get one of these. It should work well and be fast, not to mention easy to deal with. I figure I can hit up beldurnik for assistance in setting up some nifty rsync scripts to back up my web stuff and email, as well as other important data areas. I suppose I could get something bigger, but I like the small footprint of this drive.
Tonight we had dinner with beldurnik, cornelius_mcfee and amanda_mary (hopefully I got LJ identies right?) at Luigi’s. I had a calzone and it was yummy as usual.
Unfortunately it appears there will be no observation of the Perseids tonight/tomorrow morning. Too many clouds. Woe is me. 
Woke up somewhere around 2-2:30. Couldn’t get back to sleep. Decided to get up (at 3:45) and putz around on the computer. Modified shutdown script (perl script which reads config file and shuts down computer if time is right) for computer labs so that it’s cleaner. Modified crontab on home server to stop producing error messages if fetchmail is already running. Decided I should go back to bed. Bye.
I determined that 720×480 @ 6000-8000 Mbps … is too much for my MythTV box to deal with when playing back (probably I/O bound given that the capture card does the decoding). The default settings are 480×480 @ 4500-6000 Mbps. I think there’s some more tuning in order.
… I didn’t have that today. This morning I got terribly stressed at work when I thought we had lost another computer … as it turns out, we discovered that I had delivered the wrong computer to someone. This also resolved the problem of the missing RAM sticks that I thought someone had swiped from my office. This afternoon was fairly uneventful.
Tonight, Liz and I cleaned the living room, cleaned the dining room, made and froze lasagna, did dishes, made bread, made brownies, made dinner (tried out the steamer with corn on the cob and grilled some chicken). Possibly forgot an item or two in there, but not sure.
Anyway, it’s been a good day and I think I’m going to head to bed now.
Yay! It’s the weekend. I’ve spent the morning working on web-related stuff on my server. I tweaked some configuration options to stop warnings from appearing in my mythtv web log. There isn’t anything I can do to totally eliminate the warnings until a new version of the webpage code comes out, so I didn’t want to have to see them.
I upgraded my webmail software and my photo gallery software as well so I now am running current versions. The photo gallery really looks quite different and was a little tricky to get to look quite right.
I created a couple of webpages with some information about some of the web apps I run on my webserver (including mythtv for those who are interested in creating their own). These are all linked from the homepage.
Somewhere this morning we managed to eat breakfast (mmm … yummy pancakes … thanks Liz!) and do dishes. This afternoon after lunch we’re heading over to the Barnes & Noble in Har Mar… I am still looking for a good FreeBSD admin book.
Tomorrow we’re doing the 8am church service so that we can hook up with beldurnik and czar_sonja in Stillwater for breakfast and cycle ride (and possibly some shopping in downtown). Tomorrow afternoon I get to set up a network at a dentist practice in Ellsworth. That should be fun too (for me anyway).
I did manage to get the MythTV tweaked enough that the web interface is now web-accessible (provided you have a username and password … didn’t want everyone in the world programming my PVR, though there are apparently some people who don’t mind that sort of thing. I also managed to get some coworkers interested in making their own. I’m not sure how well it will work for them since they don’t have land-line analog cable like I do… I’m pretty sure they have satellite. The MythTV software is capable of other stuff tho, so who knows.
I got to deliver another new computer today to the campus photo service person. He was pretty happy to get it. It should help out a lot once he gets his software set up. The KC Chiefs are in town so he’s doing a lot of photos right now. I’m delivering another computer to the sports info guy in the same office area tomorrow. I wish I could deliver one of these to myself, but I’ll have to be content and let the replacement cycle work it’s way through to me.
This weekend sounds like there may be the possibility of a little family get-together. Not sure if that’s going to happen but we’ll see I guess. May also be the possibility of hitting Bona Casa (which I really *need* to take beldurnik to sometime. Speaking of him, we’re getting together with him on Sunday so liz4jc4ever can get a bike ride. It should be fun. Perhaps there should be grilled brats involved…
I’m haven’t posted much recently, but I haven’t really had a lot to post about. Tonight I mostly completed my MythTV project. I say mostly because there are some things I could tweak and or set up yet, but the basic “Tivo-like” functionality is there. Right now it’s recording “Rides” on TLC for me because I don’t feel like staying up until 10pm (was up until 11:15ish last night working on the project).
This past weekend wasn’t quite as relaxing as I would have liked. Saturday wasn’t bad, but Sunday was a bit on the tiring side. I took my parents and Liz to the Beldenville Old Car Show. It was fun. Got to drool over some very nice cars. Also saw some that were either odd or just plain wrong. That reminds me… I also bought (split cost with parents) an HP Photosmart 7660 printer. That one prints *very* nice photos. It also handily serves as a memory card reader (which is how I retrieved the photos for the car show … hence the mention here).
This week at work has been going okay so far. I’ve spent a significant amount of time dealing with the new task-/call-management software (Footprints). We’re supposed to go live with it in 3 weeks and it feels like there’s way too much to do before then. I’m also trying to get new computers installed, but it’s going to be tough this week since one of my coworker’s is out of town helping family move. I spent most of this afternoon clearing stuff out of our storeroom… a lot of junked computers plus 2 dozen 17″ and 19″ monitors that we are storing in another location simply so we can walk all the way to the back of our storeroom (novel idea eh… being able to get at what you need without tripping over stuff).
Back to home … I just finished tweaking the server so the time is correct. It’s been running about 6 minutes off for quite a while and it was bugging me (particularly when troubleshooting problems that involved looking at log files). Hopefully all is good now.
… I ate a baby! It was a bit on the spicy side for me, but still quite yummy. They’re quite filling. I couldn’t eat the whole thing.
I really hate it when I wake up earlier than I want to, particularly when it’s before 5am. I woke up at 4:30 and my mind decided it didn’t want to go back to sleep so I’ve been putzing on the computer for a while working on my mythtv project. I’m just about to the point where I have to get the capture card installed to continue. Not sure if I’ll be doing that tonight or not.
I have to concede that “ljers” looks odd. Kinda reminds me of liars or jailbirds or something. This week has been fairly uneventful. Work is more of same-old, same-old, but I’m reaching the point of feeling like there’s no way to get everything done that we need to do in summer. It’d be nice to have a summer where this didn’t happen for a change, but I don’t see that changing anytime soon, particularly given that to solve it would require more IT staff. Tomorrow I get the joy of having to create a computer inventory report for university administrators to plan with. Not one of my favourite things to deal with.
I finally started getting some of the personal errand-type items done that I need to do. For instance, I scheduled service for my truck. The A/C is not working at all…. won’t come on. The shop I talked to suspected that it just may need recharging … a safety feature built into most A/C systems will prevent them from running if they’re not charged enough. I’m sure that will set me back a few $$$, but I’m optimistic that it won’t be as bad as the last time I took it in and had a whole bunch of stuff done. There are probably some other things that should be done but I don’t feel like paying for them right now.
The work on the street has taken an interesting twist. The level of the ground in the street right now is about 2 feet below my driveway level (which is about 18-20 inches lower than it was before I think). I’m kinda curious what they’re going to do, but I hope whatever it is the street will be complete soon. One of the side-effects of all this construction has been that the paper delivery person doesn’t seem to feel inclined to deliver the paper I’m paying for. If I don’t get any this week, I think I’m going to cancel my subscription. I’ve complained about not getting a paper twice so far. Is it all that hard to walk across my lawn to deliver? If there was snow on the ground I would concede, but it’s grass.
No big plans for the weekend other than possibly meet up with beldurnik and czar_sonja for food on Sunday.
