Things that bug me #527

People who pull through to exit a parking space instead of backing out. Especially when I'm trying to pull into the space they're pulling through.

#1 in google

It seems that a search for library card in Google will bring my library card collection up as the first result, even ahead of ALA.

On related notes here's a search for Parker Co TX library which not only brings up my site near the bottom of the first page but the person who did the search actually was interested enough to click on my link. Go figure.

An the realy odd one is someone who did a search in Mamma for how do i know what is on my library card. This is what keeps me employed. This is a completely useless search since they've not specified which library they have a card for. What should Mamma do? Guess? (Oh, and they clicked through to my site too.)

CD rebate

A few years ago I filed to be part of the class-action anti trust lawsuit against the record industry accusing them of overcharging for CDs. Well, yesterday's mail made it official. CDs cost too much. I've received my $13.86 settlement check.

A bank on the ball

Yesterday I was attempting to make my mortgage payments for the first time online. Missing the option to have the payment electronically debited from my checking account (the company's site is very poorly designed,) I was trying to put it through on my debit card as a Visa charge. It failed the first time so I tried it again and it prompt re-failed. At that moment my phone rang and it was BankOne calling to verify I was attempting to make the charge and that it wasn't fraudulent. I told them I was trying to pay my mortgage and they told me to try again as it would no go through. Hours later, I officially cancelled my old Wells Fargo account.

Koontz book updates

Several small updates were put into the ms today.

• Listings and cover scans for the large print editions of Demon Seed, The Mask, and Night Chills.
• An advance advertismenet for The Taking.
• The MP3 version of Odd Thomas, the CD version of False Memory, the CD and MP3 versions of By the Light of the Moon, and the MP3 version of The Face.

Writing updates

Just so you don't think I've forgotten, I'll have updates on both the Web design and Koontz books tomorrow.

SD card update

Exchanged the SD card at Best Buy today and the new one works just fine. Guess it wasn't a tech-support type problem, just a bum card.

Red dwarf, a rolling computer, a rug and cable cable cable

Tax refund showed up. (Woo Hoo!) So got me a new house phone (I can set the ringer to any midi file I want. Now if you call me at home I'll be notified by the Red Dwarf theme,) a rolling computer bag (I'm so sick of carrying a backpack and laptop bag through airports,) a new area rug for the office, and finished off my switch over to all Monster Cables for the home entertainment system. (Now I just need to replace most of the connectors. Maybe with the proceeds from my next royalty check...) The rest of the refund money goes to a car tuneup this week (good idea before I start the great tour of Kansas next month) and repainting the bedroom. (Maybe next weekend, who knows.)

Things that bug me #102

DVDs of TV shows that don't have a "play all" feature nor chapter stops immediately after the opening credits so I can easily skip them.

Please place you bag on the scale. thanks. now for you.

Speaking of airlines, it seems that the NTSB thinks flying would be safer if airlines weighed their passengers. (This has nothing to do with terrorism.

PDA update, tech-support hell

Got my replacement PDA today along with a 128MB SD card which can be read in both my laptop and my PDA. (This is a 'solution' to the no floppy issue.) Trouble is, the card works find in the PDA but the laptop keeps telling me it's not formatted nor can it be formatted. I called PNY's tech support and they were "unable to find [my] laptop in their database." When last we left the call the support guy was going to try to find more information and call me back. Here's me with finger's crossed. (Worst comes to worst, I return the card and try another brand.)

A few hours later the guy called back with a non-answer: "There's no reason the card shouldn't be working in your tablet." Oh, and he checked to make sure I was inserting it right-side up. Anyway, he's 'esclated' the problem to their 'falsh experts' and they'll give me a call back on Monday.

Coast to coast

It seems that the Mayor of New Paltz, NY has a concince too. He's been performing some same-sex marriages. The Mayor is also a member of the Green Party. (Just pointing out an uncommon fact. I'm not drawing any conclusions from this at all.)

One part of the article mentiones some statements by a protestor:

One protester stood outside the hall with a sign that read, in part, "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."
"It's against nature," Angelo Da'Quaro said of same-sex marriage. "It's against religion, it's against all of that."

Hmmm. If Adam and Eve were the only two people around that means there was no one to marry them. Therefore, they were having sex out of wedlock. Additionally, marriage is something use human's came up with. It's a human concept, not something out of nature.

Dr. Seuss Explains Why Computers Sometimes Crash

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk,
and the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM,
then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

Thanks L!

XML: an introduction, take 2

Today marked the second time I've taught my INtro to XML class. Of course, a significant amount of the material was different from the first time since the first time through is always a dry run and you know that you'll need to make changes after the fact. This time through went much smoother including the material I'd added. Day two still ended about an hour earlier than planned but I'm not sure what else I can add to extend the class that will only take up an hour. I could make the data file we create on day one more detailed in order to extend the manipulation of that dayda on day two, but that might extend the first day's material into day to and splitting an individual topic over two days would not work very well for the students. I'm thinking about it but I'm not sure what to do.

Junt in case any of you are familiar with XML here's a basic outline of the class to far. Any ideas will be appreciated.

• Day one, morning: Intro to XML concepts and creation of an XML data file
• Day one, afternoon: Writing an XML Schema document to validate out data file against
• Day two, morning: Writing an XSLT document to transform our data file into XHTML for Web presentation
• Day two, afternoon: Writing an XSLT document to transform our data file into another XML language (MARC-XML)

Wireless blogging

It is now 4pm local time...

It seems that I had three hours to kill at the Des Moines airport and that they had WiFi access. I booted up the laptop and checked it out. The company that supplies the access here offered a rate of $3.95/hour. Since that seemed slightly more reasonable than the $9.99 minimum at DIA I figured I'd bite the bullet and give it a try.

"excellent" signal stregnth got me to the signup page and I quickly registered for an account, credit card number and all. I was told to shut down my browser, restart it, and log in. So far so good. Unfortunately, when I tried to log in nothing happened. "Wating for localhost" my ststus bar reported back to me.

Ah, but there's an 800 number to call for help with problems. Twelve minutes later and I'm still on hold waiting for help…

At the 14 minute mark I've tried logging in again. This time I've got a response:

Error !!

Please contact your service provider technical support!

Ooh, am I becoming annoyed…

15:30 and I've got a human…

According to them I have two accounts.

20:33 and they suggest I reboot.

23:40. Success! The reboot seems to have worked and I'm in.

Web design book update

Five more pages of the forms chapter were completed last night. Might not get any pages completed tonight since I'm flying back home this evening.

Whoopie!

My Colorado tax refund appeared in my bank account earlier today. Car repairs, here we come.

Web design book update

As promised I wrote ten new pages today in the Forms chapter. It's coming along nicely.

E-mail problems

It seems that BCR's e-mail system has been down since yesterday afternoon and will continue to be down for the foreseeable future. (I don't know why. They don't tell me things like that when I'm on the road. ;-) If you've sent me any e-mail @ work, I've not received it and I may never receive it. Please resend to my webpan address if it is of any importance.

Observation

I'll admit that it's been years since I've read a Star Trek novel but when did they stop numbering them? Better yet, why?

On the road again

Greetings from the Iowa State Library in Des Moines. I was going to blog yesterday but it turns out that even though I can get wireless access within DIA, it costs $9.99 for 24 hours of access and that's the cheapest it gets. (Never mind that none of the signs all over the airport that say "Get your wireless access here" mention the fact that they're charging an arm and a leg for it.) I must say that it was nice to boot up the laptop and see "wireless connection available" but it wasn't worth the cost to surf for just the hour before my flight.

Other things I learned yesterday

• Air Tran Airlines and ATA are two different airlines and, of course, their ticket counters are on opposite ends of DIA.
• If you're flying ATA out of Chicago Midway, you're going to have to take a shuttle bus to a completely different terminal on the other side of the runways. This for some reason seemed to confuse half of the people on my flight since we had to get our tickets taken from us, then wait in another lounge for the shuttle bus that would take us to the hanger where our plane was.
• According to one guy on the plane selling the Bible is different from selling other books for several reasons. The main one being that there "isn't any author personality issues that need to be dealt with."
• If you forget to put the O-ring back into your coffee mug, the lid will leak.

And no, I didn't do any writing yesterday. Ten pages is now on the schedule for this evening.

Web design book update

You may have noticed that I did not post an update on this project yesterday. If you did, congratulations. Why? Because I didn't work on the book yesterday. O.k. I spent all evening and night (until 2am this morning) finishing up season one of Stargate SG1. Sue me. However, I've just written the first five pages of the Forms chapter. (No, I didn't finish the Basic Markup chapter, I just needed to change gears and I was in a forms mood.)

It just doesn't make sense

So the sign in the video store window said "Everything at least 30% to 50% off." O.k. That just does not make any logical sense. Something can be at least 30% off or at least 50% off, but can the "at least" be a range? No.

PDA update

Took it back to Best Buy and had it declared "devo." (When I asked I wasn't told what it stood for but that it meant the item was dead and worthy of replacment instead of repair.) Unfortunately, they didn't have any replacements in stock but will come Wednesday. Considering I'm in Des Moines this week I'm going to have to try and survive the week without a PDA. This may get interesting.

The PDA from hell

Well, my iPaq decided to spontaneously hard reboot itself this morning and for the past week the bottom half of the section of the screen in which you do most of your writing has been flaky at best. Every once and a whole I'm glad that I've bought the store extended warranty and this is one of them. I should have a new one by the end of the day.

Star Wars: Survivor's Quest
by Timothy Zahn

Off the bookshelf

A throughly enjoyable book but I can't quite figure out where this one appears in the Star Wars timeline. It's definitely post Thrawn, post the marriage of Luke and Mara Jade and well before the New Jedi Order but that's about as narrowed down as I can make it. For some reason the timeline was not printed in this book as has been done for the past several years. If anyone knows for sure, or even has a good gues, I'd appreciate it.

Web design book update

Five more pages completed. If I keep on this schedule chapter four, Basic XHTML Markup, should be completed by the end of the weekend. (No, I'm not writing the chapters in order.)

Actually here's how the book stands. ~ means it's partically written, * means I've turned in a full draft.

Chapters

1. Introduction
2. Introduction to XHTML
3. Minimal XHTML Document *
4. Basic XHTML Markup ~
5. Hyperlinks *
6. Lists *
7. Tables *
8. Forms
9. Frames
10. Metadata
11. Introduction to CSS *
12. The Mechanics of CSS *
13. Text Formatting
14. The Box Model
15. CSS & Lists ~
16. CSS & Links *
17. CSS & Tables
18. CSS & Forms
19. CSS Positioning
20. CSS Media Types

Appendices

1. XHTML Doctypes
2. Transitional vs. Strict DTD *
3. Moving from HTML to XHTML
4. XHTML Transitional DTD *
5. XHTML Strict DTD *
6. XHTML Frameset DTD *
7. XHTML Element & Attribute Reference
8. Character Entity Reference
9. Directory Structures & Relative Hyperlinks *
10. CSS Property & Value Support Reference

Ralph Nader

The folks at RalhpDon'tRun.com have provided a short yet important presentation on why Ralph Nader should not run fro president in 2004.

Web design book update

Another five pages are done. That's three for three. (Next week will be harder since I'm on the road. Then again, that may make it easier...)

Take me to your leader

Today Marvin the Martian was added to my desk decorations.

Wearing something on my sleeve

One friend

People come and
People go
They take and the give
Build you up
Just to let you down
That's just the way it is

All I need is one friend
To get me through the day
One Friend
That never goes away
(Only) one friend
To understand
And never let me down
I've been in love
I've been in pain
I'm a sinner
And a saint
No matter where I am
Or what I do
It's you I appreciate

All I need is one friend
To get me through the day
One Friend
That never goes away
(Only) one friend
To understand
And never let me down

Can't nobody love you
More than you love yourself
Ans as long as I've ogt my one good friend
I don't need nobody else

All I need is one friend
To get me through the day
One Friend
That never goes away
(Only) one friend
To understand
And never let me down

— Keb' Mo'

Did ike meet with aliens 50 years ago?

Actually, there is a library connection in this report about the debate.

Marriage updates

According to this MSNBC article Chicago's mayor is ok with same-sex marriages.

On the Denver front, Mayor Hickenlooper supports the rights of same-sex couples.

And in San Francisco, the city fights back by suing to have California's same-sex marriage ban declared unconstitutional.

Web design book update

Another five pages today. Keeping on target so far...

Fyi

Just because I have a question about something doesn't mean I'm 'worried'.

Someone else who just doesn't get it

This review of The Clumsy Lovers' latest album was printed in the newspaper of the University of Colorado, Denver paper.

Download the internet

Ever want to see everything that's online? Why not download it to your hard drive first?
Thanks dad

Koontz book update

In response to my assistance with his Web site, Ed Gorman has agreed to contribute an essay to the lettered edition.

Web design book update

I've set myself a goal of a minimum of five pages per day until this book is done. Day one of this goal was a success as I just finished writing five pages on <hr /> and one page on <i>.

Web design book update

Chapter 7: Tables, has gone out. (Don't think I'm writing the chapters in order...)

So, you think you know me?

Go ahead, take the quiz.

This is fun

In fact I'm so confident in this whole thing working that I'm blogging from bed right now. (Yes, I'm clothed...) Nighty night.

No, really, I mean it this time

What you don't know is that 10 minutes after my last post about being connected wirelessly or wired (wiredly?) everything failed once again. (I think I'm suddenly getting a bald spot on my head.) Three hours later...

I finally called Gatweay's Wireless Networking Support Team and got some professional help. It seems that by having my ISP (via the router) automatically assign me my DNS servers, the router was getting confused as to which packets to send to which computer. Hence the Gateway's DNS lookup problems. So, all I had to do was to manually assign my DNS' and presto, everything works just fine (even when I'm wired on the wireless laptop.) This of course was the only thing I didn't try but thought would solve the problem as soon as "Clayton" (probably not his real name and most likely in India) told me what to do. (He liked the fact that I knew what he was talking about and had already tried about a dozen things he would have suggested to anyone else.) In fact, I'm so confident that this is now stable that I'm saying it's stable again and not even worried about it.

Note to mom and dad: I hope you've found this at least interesting even though I'm sure you've not understood a word of something I've writtem yet again. ;-)

Koontz book update

A special thanks goes out to Steve Paul for sending me a copy of "Diligently Corrupting Young Minds". I've of course added it to the ms. (No word back from Dean yet BTW.)

Problem solved?

Here's what I believe I've figured out. I can connect with the wireless connection. I can connect with the wired connection. But I can't plug in the wire and use the faster connection if I've also got access to a wireless connection. (Though I swear this worked fine last night.) So, wired only if there's no wireless. (BTW, wired is 10x faster than wireless.)

I knew it!

No five minutes after making that previous post saying everything was stable, my connectivity disappears on my laptop. I can see and acces sthe other computers but for some reason I've got no DNS service despite all of the numbers looking good.

An odd occurrence

Usually I read an article and say "I should have written that." This is the first time in which I've read an article ("Peace, Quiet & Power Too", Smart Computing, February 2004) knowing that I declined to write it.

Yeah, but I bet she gets to keep the car and the house

Barbie and Ken are splitting up. If they can't make it after 43 years, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Blue screen of death

No, this entry has nothing to do with the new laptop. It's just a pointer to a creative 404 error page I found today.

A step in the right direction

something in Windows XP's netowrking actually works! My network at home uses DHCP (assigns me an IP address on an as-needed basis) while the network at the office uses static IP addresses (I'm assigned one and it's mine as long as I need it.) Well, I wanted to be able to set up my laptop to use the home or other DHCP networks first but then when I plug it in at work I wanted it to connect me to BCR's network without my having to manually changing my settings. Turns out that you can set up an alternate configuration for you TCP/IP settings. Everything worked immediately. Things are looking up.

Outlook = spam (but shouldn't)

Turns out that the version of Spam Assassin we're running at BCR automatically thinks that any e-mail sent from Outlook 2003 (the version on my new laptop) is spam. Basically, since the version of SA we're running was written before Outlook 2003 came out, it thinks that my copy of Outlook is impersonating a "real" version of Outlook (2002 or earlier.) Luckily there's an upgrade to SA available that we'll hopefully install shortly. I'm so glad I figured this out before hitting the road and sending e-mail that no one in the building would get unless they were paying significant attention to their junk mail folders.

A first

This is the first unflattering picture of Norah Jones I've ever seen.

Laptop update

Well, got home, turned on the laptop and all my network connections still worked. I'm going to take a chance and say that everything's stable now. (Of course, by saying that, something will go horribly wrong about an hour from now.) I also took a few pictures. Pic 1, Pic 2, Pic 3

A stake in the matter

NPR reported this morning that yesterday San Francisco's new mayor followed the state's constitution and allowed about 100 same-sex couples to get married. (Bravo!) What was also reported is that it was expected that "conservative groups" would file a law suit today.

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong) but don't you have to have a stake in the issue in order to file suit. Just exactly what is their stake? How are they harmed if same-sex marriages are allowed?

Update: Later in the day a suit seeking a TRO was filed by the Campaign for California Families and the Alliance Defense Fund.

Sometimes I just can't leave well enough alone

At this precise moment all three computers have Net connectivity and can talk to each other. It was all working a bit earlier but somehow it messed itself up again. (I ended up just installing NetBEUI just to get them all to talk to each other. Every time XP wante to create a "Network Bridge" everything just fell apart again.) For the past half-hour, the new laptop has been attempting to connect to AOL every time it needed to do a DNS lookup. That seems to have stopped itsel with several release/renews on the router along with many reboots of the laptop.

It's late. It's working. I'm going to bed.

Two steps forward, two steps back

After a scarry 45 minutes of having no connectivity at all on two of my computers (including being able to even access the router. Luckily the old NT box never lost connectivity at all and could get to the router) I was able to restore Internet connectivity to all of the computers. I did accidently make some progress however (I say accidently because, honestly, I have no idea how I did it,) because the two desktops can talk to each other (though that feature's always been there) and the laptop can see the two desktops. Unfortunately, neither desktop can see the laptop, nor can the laptop actually access anything on the desktops. I think I'll stop worrying about this problem for the night and just continue installing software and updates on the laptop.

Wireless fun

I am writing this entry while sitting in my livingroom using my new wireless laptop. I've got INternet connectivity but I can't seem to find the other two computers on my network. Well, that should keep me busy for a little while.

Ashcroft asks for medical records

It seems that Ashcroft has been requesting medical records of woman who have had "partial birth abortions" from doctors. Luckily a judge has stopped him, for now. (I put the term in quotes since that is not the medical term for the procedure and I couldn't find the correct term.)

Edgorman.com

Ed Gorman is about the only author out there today that can not only get me to read mysteries but I'll also read his westerns. He's finally got an official site up at EdGorman.com and I just sent in this past weekend more than 100 book cover scans from my collection. They'll start to show up on the site in the next few days.

For/against

I just had to post this entry from Eric Alterman's blog as is.

The Post characterizes the WH's preferred message as "Bush is for traditional marriage, not against gay people," For the record, I am for "traditional slavery," but not against black people.

Webmonkey rip

"Sources inside the company said many members of its U.S. ad sales team were laid off Monday, along with the engineering and Webmonkey staff in San Francisco…"

Here's the full article.

Library Software book update

The current numbers show that Lousie and I have sold 150 copies of The Neal-Schuman Directory of Management Software for Public Access Computers. The Good news is that we only needed to sell 100 to cover our advance. In other words, we'll actually start getting royalty checks for this title come summer.

It's here!

My new laptop just arrived!

Blog update

I've added an RSS feed link to the main menu. This is however in the Atom format that Blogger.com supports. Your RSS software needs to be Atom compatible for it to work properly.

Karma

I must have earned a lot of karma points last year becuase I just got real lucky. Turns out that I left my car lights on when I went to a meeting at DU this evening. 2.5 hours later my car won't start. So, I get out my cell phone and call AAA; which I joined less than 2 weeks ago. Got a jump 25 minutes later and now I'm home.

Retro horror

The Light at the End by Craig Skipp & John Spector

Let's be honest. With a few exceptions (Koontz, King & Wright) the horror genre in the 80s sucked big time. (I tried to come up with a description slightly more literary but this one just seemed to fit.) One of those other exceptions was the works of John Skipp & Craig Spector. This pair was involved with the creation of the "splatterpunk" movement and back in 2000 Stealth Press started to reissue their books in a series of well-designed hardcovers. The first three titles were released along with one new solo novel by Craig Spector. I've finally gotten around to reading the first in the seres, The Light at the End. A wonderful spin on the Vampire legend mostly centered around the subway tunnels in New York City. This work however is definitely a child of the eighties. "Data pagers" cost $150 each, one character replayed a memory in "the Betamax of his mind," and then a bunch of characters went off to play D&D. (To which Lisa reminded me that her husband still does that on a weekly basis.) If you can get around these little quirks, Skipp & Spectors' novels show that there was still life in the horror genre in the late eighties. Unfortunately, that life remained dim for another 10+ years.

Note: It looks like Stealth Press seems to have stopped publishing. While looking up the links for this post I found that their site hasn't been updated since the end of 2001. I e-mailed them to ask about the status of the company but yet to receive any sort of reply.

I'll give you one guess

Anyone want to try and guess who posted this annonymous comment to my post Adding insult to injury?

This isn't a campaign stop, honest

Bush said this morning that WMDs are "the greatest threat before humanity today." What wasn't reported was that the original draft of the speech read "the greatest threat to my reelection campaign." Unfortunately that line would have made it more obvious that Bush once again has given a campaign speech in a state just days after it's democratic primary leaving the taxpayer's to foot the bill.

Ahh, texas

A texas housewife and mother has been charged with violating Texas obscenity laws for selling sex toys (in a tupperware party type environment) to an couple who were actually undercover cops.

Texas law allows for the sale of sexual toys as long as they are billed as novelties... But when a person markets sex toys in a direct manner that shows their actual role in sex, then that person is subject to obscenity charges, she told the newspaper.

Beating of nearly dead horse slows down a little

The Tennessee lawsuit against Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and Viacom has been withdrawn.

Bloody 'ell

Interested in how the British accect has changed over the years? Check out this site from Collect Britain.

Three wise… men?

According to a report from the Church of England, "while it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility that one or more ... were female cannot be excluded completely." Read more via this AP report.

Missing my caucus won't matter anyway

I was kind of excited once I figured out that Colorado has caucusses instead of a primary. (I didn't bother find out four years ago since Gore was going to get the nomination anyway.) The CO caucus is in April but I'll be out of town that day so my excitement quickly disappeared. Trouble is, only fourteen states have voted and four candidates have already dropped out. By the time we get to April, will Colorado's votes for the Democratic nomination really matter? Will anyone but Kerry and Shaprton be left? Probably not.

What I did discover today was a plan from the National Association of Scretaries of State to revise the national promary system. This plan would break the country up into four regions. One region would vote on a day in March. Then the other three follow on single days in Arpil, May, and June. Which region got to go first would rotate. This sounds like an excellent plan to me. Now, if we could just get 50 state legislatures to go along with the plan...

Bush releases usless records

Here's a link to the transcript of yesterday's press briefing. For once, it sounds like the press is not buying the party line on an issue. ("Scott, that wasn't my question, and you know it wasn't my question." and "I asked a simple question; how about a simple answer? ") Also, here's Michael Moore's response to the release.

Creative and funny

Nat has put up an ALA READ poster that they won't be offering anytime soon.

Reworking the constitution

Correct me if I'm wrong but the US Constitution (or any state constitutions I'm aware of) have never been used to limit the rights of individuals. Read it. All of it's statements give rights, not limit them. Any sort of constitutional ammendment to ban something (i.e. gay marriage) would be setting on Hell of a nasty precident. Besides, how is a ban on gay marriage any different then bans on multi-racial marriage from the previous century?

Would you like to rearrange this post

Mark has made a tool available to turn the first bunch of words of any page into magnetic poetry.