Digital Choke Daynotes

"Daynotes" are popularized by a Internet Web site called the "Daynotes Gang" (http://www.daynotes.com or http://www.daynotes.org), a collection of the daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. You can send your comments to us by clicking on any mailbox icon.

A busy weekend. Packing boxes, "Lone Ranger" trips, delivery of a hutch we sold through the newspaper, more stuff for the local charity store. And we are still not done packing.

But, a major success in the home-search department. Our Realtor® took us to see a few homes on Friday, and we found one that was good enough for an offer. It's a two-story, 4 bedroom plus 'bonus' room (a bedroom without a closet), 3 batch (2 up, one down), a nice kitchen with a breakfast nook, family room, along with a living room and dining room. It is just a couple of years old, and the owners got quite a few upgrades, in addition to front and back landscaping. The back yard has a patio cover that is almost the width of the house, and the back yard is mostly concrete and plantings. (No small kids, so we don';t need a play area in the back yard; and there is a park just a block away.) The kitchen has granite countertops, with an island, and a double oven (which pleased my wife). The house had been on the market for a couple of months, but they had priced it a bit high. They had just reduced the price, but still hadn't gotten any bites. We gave them an offer that was below their new asking price, they countered with a higher price (but still below their current price); we expected them to counter. So we accepted it, they accepted it, we signed papers, and now we just wait for the 30-day closing period.

And we celebrated by going out to dinner on Saturday night. I must have gotten a bad batch of something; I had problems last night with an upset stomach/gas/etc. Went to bed early, but didn't sleep all that well. Was a bit better this morning, so went to Church and then came home for a short nap before going off to my daughter's for Easter dinner. (Can't have dinner here, we gave away the dining room table to some friends.) That was enjoyable.

In the meantime, we are still planning on next Saturday as the moving day. We'll put most things in storage, and just move the basics to the apartment. With any luck, we'll only stay in the apartment for about a month. That will give my wife some time to do some furniture shopping. And I will contemplate the purchase of an HDTV system.

With all that happening the last few days, I missed the Friday/Saturday posting. This week might be a bit sparse also. So my regular readers (both of you) will see slim pickings around here. (Didn't he used to be a second banana in old Western movies?)

The secret project has returned. And I need some ideas on a program that will analyze a bunch of mime.822 messages. Each message is in a separate file. A message file will contain the envelope header, message text, and any attachments are the textual equivalent of the binary attachment. The collection of messages need to be in some searchable form, such as a database, and a viewer for various types of attachments would be nice. If you have any ideas, click on the mailbox icon to send a message.

The project is taking all of my time, and I need a way to easily extract data from the message files, and view the contents of the message. Ideas on how to import things into any mail client would be helpful. Keep in mind that I am running only WIndows boxes, I don't have a Linux box available.

I've spent all night doing "Googles" to find something that will work, but no success yet. (Well, I am watching the Kings destroy the Jazz out of the corner of my eye. It's late in the 4th quarter, and the Kings are ahead by almost 30 points.) Thanks for your help.

Had a short meeting with the vendor that will be building the Class Attendance project. This project keeps track of child attendance at 42 different locations, with each location having multiple classes. Each location must keep track of all the children as they attend their after-school program. It is important that they know exactly where each child is, and when they are picked up by whoever is authorized to get them. It is sort of like a package tracking system, where each package is a child, and you need to know where the package is at all times.

The design will use Compaq iPaqs to keep attendance, with the data linked to a site laptop each day. The site laptop will gather all the info, then send it to a main server inside the company network. All of this needs to be done while keeping the data encrypted and secure. It is probable that an iPaq will go missing, and the data inside needs to be kept confidential. It's an interesting project, and it has to be in place by September of this year.

My meeting with the group was to just ensure that the infrastructure is in place, all connections are secure and encrypted. We'll do this with a VPN connection between the location laptop and the main server. So I just had to make sure that the vendor knew our security requirements.

I spent the rest of the day working on the 'secret project'. Time-consuming stuff, and a bit boring, but necessary to analyze the data.

At home tonight, it was packing boxes again (still). And watching the episode of "24". While writing this, listening to the NBC "Dateline" report about losing weight. And there was an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal about what science knows about losing wieght. I plan on saving that for a bit of re-reading, since I need to lose a few pounds.

Exciting news around the house today. My daughter, now a senior in high school with excellent grades, had previously been accepted into Brigham Young University (BYU) at the Provo, Utah and Rexburg, Idaho campuses. But what she really wanted to get into was the Nursing program at either university (Idaho was her first choice). That is even harder than getting accepted to the college.

She has been working really hard to get in. Her high school grades are straight A's (with the exception of two B's), and this last semester has been participating in an after-school work program at one of the local hospitals. She has been getting excellent reviews from her co-workers, and she really enjoys the work. (Although we try to limit her discussions of the latest trauma at the ER to non-dinner hours.) Her current plan is to get the two-year Registered Nurse degree, then finish up with the four year Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She is also considering becoming a doctor.

She has been anxiously awaiting acceptance into the Nursing program at the college, and today got the news that she was accepted. She was extremely excited. She called me at work and you could tell from her voice that she had this gigantic smile on her face. We are quite proud of her efforts and achievements. The program starts in June, so there is much preparation involved in finishing up her high school year, and then preparing and moving her back to Idaho. And mixed up in all of that is the move out of this house into an apartment, and a monthly later another move into the new (to us) house.

After work this evening, we stopped by the new house for a walkthrough. Both daughters came along, the oldest with her husband and two small children. The owner of the house was quite gracious, showing us all around the house and yard. I took lots of pictures, along with important room measurements. (One of the most important might be the space for the television -- it is wide enough for a 48" high definition television.) It is a very nice house, although it would seem that my wife and I will be the only ones taking up permanent residence. The home is in excellent condition. The home inspector will take a look at it on Monday, but I don't expect any problems.

So we all celebrated by going out to dinner at "Red Robin", a hamburger place a bit upscale of the "Golden Arches". They have very good burgers, along with other good dishes (the grilled chicken salad with tiny strips of tortilla chips is quite good). Then we stopped by Best Buy to take a quick look at high definition televisions, and a computer for the nurse-to-be.

On the computer, I am thinking that a lower-end laptop will be sufficient for her needs at college. It doesn't have to have high-end capabilities. A smaller but good quality screen, with DVD capabilities and a 20G hard drive ought to be enough for her. I'm thinking that a very slightly used new laptop from the mail order places (Dell, Gateway, HP, etc) might work out. You can sometimes find very good deals on those systems. A refurbushed 'returned' system -- one that was returned to them after the initial purchase -- usually gets the same "QC" as a new one, at a significant price savings, along with a standard warranty. So I will be doing a bit of research on the 'net to find the best deal.

Tomorrow I get to visit with the cardiologist. We'll discuss my atrial fibrillation, along with some other heart-related issues (like my resting heart rate of about 50-60 beats/minute). I know quite a bit about 'a-fib', since I have had it for about 5-6 years, and have done some research on the whole subject. That should be interesting, along with normal work stuff. I'll need to finalize a few projects tomorrow, since I'll be taking Friday off for moving preparation. It will be a busy time until Monday rolls around.

Rainy day today. Cleared up this afternoon, with some thunderboomers hanging around the hills. More snow up in the hills, typical stories on the news of brain-dead people going up into the mountains without chains (or even warm clothes). Cleared up a bit tonight, but looks like more sprinkles tomorrow. Not exactly good moving weather.

Made a bit of progress on the garage tonight. My wife started on the pantry, boxing up canned and package goods. We're both taking tomorrow off from work, and the plan is to finish up all the packing. And also a few errands: a Lone Ranger trip and the Post Office to arrange for holding our mail for pickup until we get into the house. I also need to get to the storage place to arrange for the storage lockers, and to see if I can borrow their big truck Saturday. If it is not available, I'll need to go down to the local rent-a-truck place.

Anyhow, a fun weekend is in store. (Have I whined enough yet?) But I'm keeping my eye on the big picture. This too shall pass.

There are boxes everywhere. I need a big truck. And I haven't found one yet. I probably should have arranged for one sooner, of course. Spent about an hour on the phone calling many different truck rental places. One guy said he would have one later in the day, but then it didn't happen. By that time it was too late to call anyone else. I did get a line on a possible, but will have to wait until the morning to call. to find out. We'd planned to start loading things up at 9am, but have pushed it back to 11. That's if we can get a truck.

The alternate plan is to use pickups to move some of the stuff. That's a lot more trips, and I'll still need a big truck to move the piano and appliances.

And the best (?) part is that I get to move everything again in about a month when the new house is ready. That one will be a bit easier, perhaps, since we will only need to move an apartment's worth of stuff in one day. All the other stuff we'll move out of storage gradually.

And we're hoping the weather will get a bit better. It rained most of the day, sometimes a bit hard. Lots of new snow up in the mountains. And all that weather going through here is heading east towards other Daynoters.

A warning to both of my regular readers: There may not be a post tomorrow night. You might have to wait until Sunday.

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Digital Choke	an action that is sometimes needed for your computer; also a short techno-story available here.	Send us email