I have been fighting like hell for forward progress in my life. But the harder and longer I have fought, the stiffer the resistance has been. There came a point in the last few days when I stopped fighting - for just a little bit - and took stock of things. Then I decided to get just one damned bloody thing out of the way before taking up the fight again.
Get the wireless working. Or replace it with a cable.
So I started on the project, hoping to use the old wireless, in its final throes of death, to get the job done. I had to reset the piece of shite at least ten times. Then I threatened it. Then I slammed it against the wall. (That last one got its attention.).
And now....finally....I have wireless the works. I have internet access the way a true man us supposed to have internet access.
Next weekend I am going to take the old Linksys bridge to a special place in the back yard and I am going to pound it into a thousand pieces with a sledge hammer.
Showing posts with label Computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Computers. Show all posts
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Random Ramble
Today was the Sonzini family reunion. We are all busy becoming our parents. I have no idea what our parents are busy becoming.
After a few weeks of shoveling the mess, I have my temple space cleared out. I have the guest room cleared out. I have my old room decent enough for use as another guest room. The storage room upstairs is less crowded than it used to be. But the basement needs work. I will have to reposition Melinda's stuff and do some other cleaning before I can resume workouts. I estimate another week.
With the 4-10 schedule at work, I have given up going to the gym and my sleep schedule is messed up. This last part which surprises me because all I did was shift it a half hour earlier. I could experiment with the schedule, but with the summer two thirds done I don't see the point.
Melinda has found a place to live in Oakland, and may get a job managing the apartments in exchange for half of her rent. She is excited. We are moving her down the last week of August. Melinda and Kathleen will go a few days before me for two reasons. First, so I can help manage Gnostic Mass on the 23rd. Next, so they can call me after setting up camp and tell me what to bring and what to leave home. This will also leave me fewer days to be sitting around being bored and frustrated. I am planning to attend mass with the Thelemistas on the 30th and network Melinda with a few of The Gang. (I just hope they don't give me too hard a time for being a body master with The Caliphate O.T.O.)
Work:
I keep thinking I am figuring out this Delphi thing, and each time it finds a new way to bite me on the butt. The last time was a bit different, and has me ready to release. I thought the program was ready, then I recalled that the report units had been dropped from the project while I fixed other things. When I added them back, it errored out on compiling. A little bit of internet research turned up some ideas, but not a sure cure. So I dragged Eric over to the desk and between the two of us we got it working. Between the last error, where he provided the first half of the cure and I the second, and this one, where he only offered one small (but essential) suggestion, I am finally feeling able to handle this.
Programming is like Ceremonial Magick. In one mode it is the constant search for The One Thing, taking the aspirant through blind allies, false solutions and endless pain. In another mode it is repeating what you know, but always adding just a bit to the knowledge and practice with each repetition.
So much for the mundane.
I am tired of myself. More than that, I am tired of feeling this way about myself. There is no progress in life, in fact I am losing ground. I am also more aware with the passing of time just how little time I have left to this life. Do I give up and fail the fight? Do I keep up the old patterns of effort followed by inattention and failure? Do I finally find the key to my psyche and make the needed changes?
I am also tired of writing about it in this journal. Before the weekend is out, a new effort begins on a magickal diary and all will be recorded there.
After a few weeks of shoveling the mess, I have my temple space cleared out. I have the guest room cleared out. I have my old room decent enough for use as another guest room. The storage room upstairs is less crowded than it used to be. But the basement needs work. I will have to reposition Melinda's stuff and do some other cleaning before I can resume workouts. I estimate another week.
With the 4-10 schedule at work, I have given up going to the gym and my sleep schedule is messed up. This last part which surprises me because all I did was shift it a half hour earlier. I could experiment with the schedule, but with the summer two thirds done I don't see the point.
Melinda has found a place to live in Oakland, and may get a job managing the apartments in exchange for half of her rent. She is excited. We are moving her down the last week of August. Melinda and Kathleen will go a few days before me for two reasons. First, so I can help manage Gnostic Mass on the 23rd. Next, so they can call me after setting up camp and tell me what to bring and what to leave home. This will also leave me fewer days to be sitting around being bored and frustrated. I am planning to attend mass with the Thelemistas on the 30th and network Melinda with a few of The Gang. (I just hope they don't give me too hard a time for being a body master with The Caliphate O.T.O.)
Work:
I keep thinking I am figuring out this Delphi thing, and each time it finds a new way to bite me on the butt. The last time was a bit different, and has me ready to release. I thought the program was ready, then I recalled that the report units had been dropped from the project while I fixed other things. When I added them back, it errored out on compiling. A little bit of internet research turned up some ideas, but not a sure cure. So I dragged Eric over to the desk and between the two of us we got it working. Between the last error, where he provided the first half of the cure and I the second, and this one, where he only offered one small (but essential) suggestion, I am finally feeling able to handle this.
Programming is like Ceremonial Magick. In one mode it is the constant search for The One Thing, taking the aspirant through blind allies, false solutions and endless pain. In another mode it is repeating what you know, but always adding just a bit to the knowledge and practice with each repetition.
So much for the mundane.
I am tired of myself. More than that, I am tired of feeling this way about myself. There is no progress in life, in fact I am losing ground. I am also more aware with the passing of time just how little time I have left to this life. Do I give up and fail the fight? Do I keep up the old patterns of effort followed by inattention and failure? Do I finally find the key to my psyche and make the needed changes?
I am also tired of writing about it in this journal. Before the weekend is out, a new effort begins on a magickal diary and all will be recorded there.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
My favorite toy!
Oh joy and happiness! I am writing this on my newly repaired AlphaSmart 3000. Be still, my beating heart. I must not swoon. I am so happy to have this little device back in my life.
Why am I so excited? Go to the AlphaSmart web site and look at the Dana (it replaces the AlphaSmart 3000 in their offerings). Your first reaction will be to ask, "Why should I get excited about this? Why did you drop 200 bucks on a one purpose device, and with such limitations, when low end laptops are priced at $400?" Simple. Three AA batteries will last 700 hours in this thing. Let me repeat that... seven hundred hours. Do the math. Use it an hour a day and you get almost 2 years before having to drop a whole two dollars for new batteries. Use it a few hours a week and you forget the thing even uses juice.
It weighs only on pound. It is well built. When I turn it on, it is ready to use in 5 seconds. It never loses data. It dumps text to my PC using a USB connection, and pretends it is just a keyboard. Use it with ANY hardware, ANY operating system and dump a file into ANY program that accepts text input from the regular keyboard. When this blog post is ready, I will open a browser, log into my account and create a new post, plug in the AlphaSmart and push the send button. Shazam. The ghost in the machine starts pushing 200 words a minute onto the screen.
I am also quite pleased with my customer support experience. I sent an e-mail from the web site and had an answer within one business day, offering two options to fix the problem. I ordered a replacement keyboard to fix it myself. This was on Monday. The keyboard arrived on Friday. The instructions were clear, complete and accurate. The support people were all Americans who sounded happy and competent. The repair took less than 10 minutes - there were no surprises. The instructions were the best bit of technical writing I have seen in years. Kudos to the entire organization.
In O.T.O. news, the Electoral College voted for continuing status for Horus Oasis - I am still acting body master. They cited confirmation of my initiation to third degree as being the one item lacking. I understand and agree. "Let all be done well and with business way." A few people are treating this as if being confirmed body master is a prize or plum of some sort. "Have you heard yet?, asks one person, with a thrill in her voice. "I'm sure you'll get it!, says another, as if confirming that I am worthy, or maybe just a little bit exalted. Do any of these people stop and remind themselves that this is a JOB? It is a series of tasks, duties, and frustrations. The rewards are small and sometimes hard to recognize. It is a freaking pain in the ass. A part of me hoped the college would return a decision of, "Not only no, but Hell No." It would be a relief.
Why am I so excited? Go to the AlphaSmart web site and look at the Dana (it replaces the AlphaSmart 3000 in their offerings). Your first reaction will be to ask, "Why should I get excited about this? Why did you drop 200 bucks on a one purpose device, and with such limitations, when low end laptops are priced at $400?" Simple. Three AA batteries will last 700 hours in this thing. Let me repeat that... seven hundred hours. Do the math. Use it an hour a day and you get almost 2 years before having to drop a whole two dollars for new batteries. Use it a few hours a week and you forget the thing even uses juice.
It weighs only on pound. It is well built. When I turn it on, it is ready to use in 5 seconds. It never loses data. It dumps text to my PC using a USB connection, and pretends it is just a keyboard. Use it with ANY hardware, ANY operating system and dump a file into ANY program that accepts text input from the regular keyboard. When this blog post is ready, I will open a browser, log into my account and create a new post, plug in the AlphaSmart and push the send button. Shazam. The ghost in the machine starts pushing 200 words a minute onto the screen.
I am also quite pleased with my customer support experience. I sent an e-mail from the web site and had an answer within one business day, offering two options to fix the problem. I ordered a replacement keyboard to fix it myself. This was on Monday. The keyboard arrived on Friday. The instructions were clear, complete and accurate. The support people were all Americans who sounded happy and competent. The repair took less than 10 minutes - there were no surprises. The instructions were the best bit of technical writing I have seen in years. Kudos to the entire organization.
In O.T.O. news, the Electoral College voted for continuing status for Horus Oasis - I am still acting body master. They cited confirmation of my initiation to third degree as being the one item lacking. I understand and agree. "Let all be done well and with business way." A few people are treating this as if being confirmed body master is a prize or plum of some sort. "Have you heard yet?, asks one person, with a thrill in her voice. "I'm sure you'll get it!, says another, as if confirming that I am worthy, or maybe just a little bit exalted. Do any of these people stop and remind themselves that this is a JOB? It is a series of tasks, duties, and frustrations. The rewards are small and sometimes hard to recognize. It is a freaking pain in the ass. A part of me hoped the college would return a decision of, "Not only no, but Hell No." It would be a relief.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
To betray the Bread and Salt
The Web Migration project at work is ahead of schedule and is really being a turn-on for the left lobe of The Wombat’s brain. It has been ages since something at work has really reached out and grabbed my interest. Part of why I like this project is that it is coming together so well - better than I had hoped, and better than what I told the boss to expect. On Friday it want live for Alpha testing. Most of the HTML conversion worked as planned, and it looks sweet as hell. There is still some work to do on it, if fact there is a lot of work to do on it, but so far the conversion program has things over 80% of the way to where I want them. If I wanted to, I could take support live on it within another week. But then the bosses would expect that kind of action all the time. So I’m going to stick with the February 28 date and get it as pretty as I can before that. At least this way I don’t run the risk of being late, it will look like a good job, and I get time to do the shit I know I need to (but the bosses never see as important).
There is other news at work that isn’t really good in itself, but has nice timing. We are all moving to a common review date in April and I need to do the whole PMF process again, even though I did it just last November. It is a pain in the ass and I never enjoy it, but this time it will come right on the heels of my completing the Web Migration. Even better, we may be integrating the web search into Vision (our call logging software) and I have already figured out how to enable importing the solution from the Knowledge Base entry into the Case (call log) in Vision. I am seriously thinking this might justify having Denos reclassify my designation so I get paid more.
I was thinking a few days ago about my decision not to write too much about my Minerval, and especially about the content of the ritual itself. I used to look at stuff like this as being no big deal, laughing at the seriousness of the Occult Initiation thing. I laughed (or at least scratched my head) at the way people take it all so seriously and pretend it is all so secret (and that there is something to be had from playing the secrecy game). But something happened after my own Minerval. I think I am beginning to understand. The fact is that the ritual was no big deal, at least when taken from my old position described above. But in the study materials I got from my sponsor a few weeks ago there was mention of the fact that you get more from it if you treat initiation with respect, as if it really does mean something. Expectation forms reality.
Before the ritual, I had trolled the internet looking for the text of the ritual, but didn’t find it. The O.T.O. must do a good job of chasing down the copies posted on the web and getting people to take them down. Either that or there just isn’t much interest in the topic. Then about a week ago I was looking for instructions on making a Tau robe for my first degree (something that is surprisingly scarce) and stumbled on a file claiming to have the texts of all the O.T.O. rituals. So I downloaded it and took a look. The table of contents listed them all, right up through the degrees that a schmuck like I could ever dream of. As The Wombat sat there looking at the screen, something happened in his fuzzy little psyche. First he had to see if it was the real thing, so he ventured into the text of the Minerval ritual. It was the real deal. Now the dilemma had teeth. On the one hand I could just read the scripts and it would be no big deal (this coming from the pre-Minerval Andy). On the other hand, it would be cheating. To look at the rituals, to learn the secrets he had not yet earned, would be to betray the bread and salt. So I made my choice. I printed up the Minerval as a study aid, then carefully closed the file and vowed not to look at it again.
I suppose printing up the Minerval was hedging, but my initiator hasn’t been available for questioning. G. has also been a bit scarce. So I’ll use this as a resource until I can dredge up a teacher or two. Another reason for not looking at the other rituals is that I know how initiation is supposed to work and what it is supposed to do. If you go into it armed with the script, it is all lost on you. I don’t want to do this to myself. I want to get the full bang for my buck and let the rituals work with me as designed.
There is other news at work that isn’t really good in itself, but has nice timing. We are all moving to a common review date in April and I need to do the whole PMF process again, even though I did it just last November. It is a pain in the ass and I never enjoy it, but this time it will come right on the heels of my completing the Web Migration. Even better, we may be integrating the web search into Vision (our call logging software) and I have already figured out how to enable importing the solution from the Knowledge Base entry into the Case (call log) in Vision. I am seriously thinking this might justify having Denos reclassify my designation so I get paid more.
I was thinking a few days ago about my decision not to write too much about my Minerval, and especially about the content of the ritual itself. I used to look at stuff like this as being no big deal, laughing at the seriousness of the Occult Initiation thing. I laughed (or at least scratched my head) at the way people take it all so seriously and pretend it is all so secret (and that there is something to be had from playing the secrecy game). But something happened after my own Minerval. I think I am beginning to understand. The fact is that the ritual was no big deal, at least when taken from my old position described above. But in the study materials I got from my sponsor a few weeks ago there was mention of the fact that you get more from it if you treat initiation with respect, as if it really does mean something. Expectation forms reality.
Before the ritual, I had trolled the internet looking for the text of the ritual, but didn’t find it. The O.T.O. must do a good job of chasing down the copies posted on the web and getting people to take them down. Either that or there just isn’t much interest in the topic. Then about a week ago I was looking for instructions on making a Tau robe for my first degree (something that is surprisingly scarce) and stumbled on a file claiming to have the texts of all the O.T.O. rituals. So I downloaded it and took a look. The table of contents listed them all, right up through the degrees that a schmuck like I could ever dream of. As The Wombat sat there looking at the screen, something happened in his fuzzy little psyche. First he had to see if it was the real thing, so he ventured into the text of the Minerval ritual. It was the real deal. Now the dilemma had teeth. On the one hand I could just read the scripts and it would be no big deal (this coming from the pre-Minerval Andy). On the other hand, it would be cheating. To look at the rituals, to learn the secrets he had not yet earned, would be to betray the bread and salt. So I made my choice. I printed up the Minerval as a study aid, then carefully closed the file and vowed not to look at it again.
I suppose printing up the Minerval was hedging, but my initiator hasn’t been available for questioning. G. has also been a bit scarce. So I’ll use this as a resource until I can dredge up a teacher or two. Another reason for not looking at the other rituals is that I know how initiation is supposed to work and what it is supposed to do. If you go into it armed with the script, it is all lost on you. I don’t want to do this to myself. I want to get the full bang for my buck and let the rituals work with me as designed.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Collisions and Conversions
Last Saturday Michael (my son) and I went to get him a new bicycle. It was fun, and it was also nice not having to mess with Kathleen being in the works (she is in Colorado dealing with her grandmother’s funeral). We were going to shop around a few different shops, but there was a good deal on a Schwinn at Bingham Cyclery, so we bought it. Michael really likes it and I think he is taking satisfaction from having paid for it with his own money. But yesterday, on the ride home from school, he managed to crashed it. He reached down to adjust something while riding, went a bit off track, and hit the back of a trailer. He claims he was out cold for ten minutes. I don’t doubt the out cold part, but the 10 minutes may be a stretch. The bike also suffered a bit of damage, but the guys at the shop managed to fix all the important stuff, and didn’t charge for the labor. This was pretty damned cool, and I think they just made a loyal customer of me. In fact Kathleen went back there to get a helmet for Michael, not even making noises of going to Wally World to get one on the cheap.
There has been an interesting turn of events at work. I have been pointed to the task of pulling the Knowledge Base out of the current format and search program and converting it all to a web based search. It has been interesting. Among other things, I get to extract over 5000 individual entries from a single formatted text file and shove each of them into a discrete HTML file. If nothing else, it will be educational. Most of the work has centered around programming tasks, writing one conversion program for the database search engine and another program to create the discrete HTML files from a single text listing. Then there is programming the search screens themselves and adding a few features into them that the good people at Inference didn’t think of (or maybe they did and I’m just reinventing the wheel).
There has been an interesting turn of events at work. I have been pointed to the task of pulling the Knowledge Base out of the current format and search program and converting it all to a web based search. It has been interesting. Among other things, I get to extract over 5000 individual entries from a single formatted text file and shove each of them into a discrete HTML file. If nothing else, it will be educational. Most of the work has centered around programming tasks, writing one conversion program for the database search engine and another program to create the discrete HTML files from a single text listing. Then there is programming the search screens themselves and adding a few features into them that the good people at Inference didn’t think of (or maybe they did and I’m just reinventing the wheel).
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Doing battle with Microsoft
The weekend was dominated with the computer. I found out the hard way that the combination of Office 2003 and FrontPage (any version) breaks things, and there is no way to unbreak them. True, they are annoying things and not vital things, but still a pain in the ass. So I copied a bunch of shit to the D drive and nuked it. Reloaded, pulled it all up to the configuration I wanted, copied files to a "in case I need to do this again" CD, then stepped away from it before I would be tempted to overdo it. The only problem is with desktop themes...which fixes itself if the jpg files are converted to bmp. I have laughed to myself in the past about Kathleen wasting hours on end wrangling her computer through similar contortions. Now the joke is on me. But now that it is running again, it sure is sweet.
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