Digital Choke Daynotes

 Tuesday, May 31, 2005       mail    link   the story

After a three-day weekend, it's back to work. You sometimes think that there might be some extra crisises around because of the extra day off. But things were normal; no threats, no incursions, all was working well.

So I lucked out. And could transfer my sympathies to John Dominik, who's weeks and weekends are always interesting.

Sunday was the usual church meetings, along with the family dinner. Always enjoyable. Monday was sleeping-in day, but not too late as the new mattresss was to arrive in the morning. So a bit of cleaning before it arrived.

After lunch, we took a drive up to Nevada City for a walk along an old water canal that has turned into a hiking trail. Old water canals make great hiking trails. Minimal slopes, not steep, so they are good for an out-of-shape person like me. ("Shape? Round is a shape.")

It's an interesting trail. Because of the lack of steepness, it is one of the few wheelchair-accessable trails. It's also good for young families with small children, because it's easy for them.

At work today, I figured out a problem that has been bugging me. For web site authors, most use DreamWeaver with the Contribute program. Since we moved the content to the new computers, the Contribute users have been unable to make a new 'site' that allows them to edit their content.

I'd spent two days last week and most of this morning trying to figure it out. Contribute uses an FTP connection, but the steps to complete the configuration failed with an error. A normal FTP client program works OK. And the same configuration commands done manually worked OK.

So, after much digging with Google, I found a reference to a configuration file that was stored on the web server. I looked at that file and found references to the old servers. So I changed the settings, and that didn't work. So I deleted the file and finally got Contribute to connect.

Would have been nice if that information had been on the Macromedia web site.

 Thursday, June 2, 2005       mail    link   the story

Stayed home from work today to perform babysitting duties. Max (youngest grandchild, one year old this month) has been having problems with ear infections, so it was decided to have tubes put in his ears. His appointment to do this was this morning.

Since the appointment was early in the morning, and near us, Christine (the Mom) and the grandkids spent the night last night. Pam went to work, and I stayed home with the older two grandkids (Joelle - 5, Liam - 3) while Christine and Max went to the doctor.

So, we had french toast for breakfast, watched Christmas DVD movies, played with toys, and had a good time. Christine and Max got back about 10:30am, and we visited some more, had lunch, and they left.

Nothing technical today, although Bruce Schenier had an interesting thing on the spy tradecraft of "Deep Throat". (Those of you under 35 will need to get into the history books to figure out that whole thing.)

A quiet evening tonight. Stacy went on a date with a guy tonight; we found out that he and Stacy share the same 3rd Great Grandparents. That makes them 4th cousins? We just met him for the first time tonight, so I kept my mouth shut about "kissing cousins".

 Saturday, June 4, 2005       mail    link   the story

Not much happening around here. Did some cleaning around the house this morning (well, Pam did most, but I helped a bit). I moved a couple of lawn sprinklers to better locations by using a flexible pipe.

I finished reading the Dale Brown "Plan of Attack" book today. He used to live in this area (in Folsom, near Sacramento CA), but now lives up in Lake Tahoe (CA). His books usually have a local reference to things around here. In one of his books, the bad guys blew up the long bridge over the Yolo Bypass. It's an area used for flood control and rice farming. The bridge is about a mile long, west of Sacramento, part of I-80. Here's the Google satellite image, close-up view.