killer-robot-clan.com

I will be thirty in just a few weeks time, my birthday is August 9th. My birthday wish list is all the proof that anyone will ever need that I am living up to all of the 30 something stereotypes. Here is my wild and adventurous birthday wishlist (note sarcasm):

a tire for my truck

a new tub for my bathroom

a gift certificate for the feed store

a gift certificate for the hardware store

woohoo, here comes middle age!

Filed under: family | No Comments »

The information age has offered us so many different forms of communication that our greatest challenge is figure out how to best take advantage of them.

So why in the world do we still have voicemail?

1) I hate listening to voicemail. I hate trying to make a decent sounding recording of my name using a tool designed for live communication. I hate navigating endless automated phone prompts. I hate replaying a message while I look for something to write a phone number down on. I hate having to linearly trudge through all my messages in order to hear the one that I want. I hate that the act of listening to voicemail ties up my phone and sends other incoming calls directly there.

2) I hate leaving voicemail. I hate listening to the patronizing, endlessly patient, automatic instructional voice carefully explain to me how to leave a message, as thought I’d never done it before, every single time. I hate the lack of standardized menu trees. I hate being blindsided with a non-postponeable recording when I was prepared to have an interactive conversation with someone. I hate the unnatural act of trying to have a conversation with someone who isn’t there.

In the time it would take me to construct and recored a voicemail message, constrained to 30 seconds, I could have put all the same information, and more, into an email, providing both me and the receiving party with sortable, indexable, archivable, replyable copies of the coorespondenance, that communications more information, take me less effort to create, and them less effort to absorb. If you don’t like email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, of FriendFeed it to me. If you want to, write me a letter on paper, put a stamp on it, and send it in the mail….I don’t mind.

Or…here’s a revolutionary concept…

Just call me back later.

Filed under: Miscellaneous | No Comments »

I am ending my month-long experiment with the Flock Browser. I continue to be in love with what is promises, and continue to be disappointed with how it delivers.

For those unfamiliar, Flock is a fork of the Firefox codebase which is supposed to integrate all the popular web2.0 services in a cohesive way. I was excited about it because it supports most of the services and technologies that I use regularly, including Digg, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Del.icio.us, wordpress, RSS, and Gmail. The way that it brings these things together, though, isn’t quite what I’d hoped. Let’s take a look a what I feel it needs to do better before I give it another try.

Social bookmark integration

For a product that prides itself on social network integration, I had taken it for grated that online bookmarking would be the default, if not the only, behavior. With my tendency to use multiple browsers on multiple computers at multiple sites, I have for years used online bookmarking through del.icio.us more than extensively…I use it to the complete exclusion of local bookmarks. That’s right, I don’t use local bookmarks at all. I was frustrated, then, when I had to fight with Flock’s settings to get it to use my del.icio.us account exclusively.
Still, with a little wrangling, I got it to create bookmarks the way I wanted it to. So now it should populate my Bookmarks menu with them dynamically, right? Well…no. To access a bookmark, I have to click Bookmarks, expand the Online Bookmarks menu, expand the Del.icio.us menu, and then expand the desired tag. That’s right - my bookmarks start after four levels of drop-down menus. That kind of thing makes HCI people cry.
On the other hand, Yahoo!’s excellent official Firefox extension for del.icio.us, which doesn’t work in Flock, does everything I need simply and painlessly.

Blog editing

Flock lets me right click on pictures I find on the web, and choose “Blog This” to start a new blog post and embed that image into it. Cool! Unfortunately, it deep links the image, which is not cool, so I find myself still blogging pictures in the old fashioned way in order to see it done correctly - manually putting the image either on Flickr or uploading it through wordpress, and then manually constructing the IMG SRC code.

Gmail

Flock integrates with my GMail account, but it’s unclear exactly what this means, except that it makes GMail take twice as long to load, and frequently breaks the page. I haven’t found a single feature which changes my GMail experience in any way. Technically, Flock attempts to process mailto: links by starting a GMail message, but even this trivial feature is broken due to a Google API change, and can be achieved more reliably by installing the Google Toolbar in Firefox. I’ve grown so resistant to wanting to wait to load GMail through Flock, that I’ve started keeping another browser open to do email.

Photo management

Flock has a built in upload manager for putting photos onto photo sharing sites (We use Flickr). Excellent. The Flock photo uploader actually works well, and is pretty much a feature-for-feature re-implementation of the official Flickr Uploadr application (version 2, which I still prefer). It’s not any more useful than Uploadr, though, and it raises the question of why I want such a tool built into my web browser at all. Integrating a feature that doesn’t involve any web pages into a web browser doesn’t save me time or simplify anything…it’s just fluff.

Flock also has a “media bar”, that allows you to browse online photo thumbnails using a pretty slick native interface. Being able to drag and drop embed links out of this and into web forms is really cool, but I otherwise haven’t found a use for it. Flickr’s web site does a much better job of organizing thumbnails into a coherent “stream” than Flock does, particularly for large sets which Flock has no simple way to scan or search through.

RSS

This is probably just me. I hate almost every RSS aggregator that I’ve ever tried. Flock’s is not an exception. In fact, I think it’s the furthest removed from my workflow of any client I’ve tried yet. Flock’s quite cooperative about turning this off and sending all my feeds over to Google Reader, but so is every other browser.

“People” summary

Flock has an array of interesting internally-generated portal pages and sidebar summaries for showing you all kinds of things about what’s going on in your social network. None of them are outright bad, but none of them are as useful or personal as a good online portal page, like iGoogle, Netvibes, or the dozens of other offerings out there. I spent weeks fiddling with “My World” to try to make it into a useful start page for me, but it never showed me quite what I wanted.

Performance

Flock feels like and acts like it was written in Java. I don’t know how to express it better than that. It’s sluggish, ungainly, and it pegs the CPU for minutes at a time on some of the most seemingly simple tasks. It’s just as bad in Linux as it is on my Mac. It just makes everything take longer.

So, I’m done with Flock, on all of my computers. Browser experiments will continue.

Filed under: tech | No Comments »

On June 13th, twenty days ago, my doctor called me to give me the results from the MRI imaging of my neck and shoulder. She mentioned a few findings, and then ended the conversation without any request for a follow up appointment or treatment suggestions. I immediately called back, got her voicemail, and left a message asking what the next steps were.

Over a week later, I get a call from her nurse. The nurse asks me, “Are you still having problems with your arm?” WTF? Of course I’m still having problems with my arm. So she says they’re going to refer me to an orthopedist and asks if I have a preference.

I told her I needed to check with my mother in law (who works in an orthopedic clinic, so knows the doctor’s reputations) and my insurance company. I called back the next day and left a message indicating my physician preference. I STILL have not received a return phone call or been notified of my appointment with the orthopedist.

Monday I had a biopsy done on my left breast. The hospital said the results would be available in 24 hours, and that my doctor would call me. Even if the results are good I’m expecting a call to inform me of the date for my follow up mammogram. Its Thursday. Still no call.

This is unprofessional and maddening.

Filed under: family | No Comments »

There’s generally a right way and a wrong way to do things, but when the right way means throwing your laptop away, it gives me the liberty to hack on things that would normally be too delicate and precarious to be worth risking further damage.

The LCD backlight on Gavyn’s laptop finally gave up the ghost last weekend, and though the video driver continued to work normally, it didn’t do anyone any good because we couldn’t actually see anything.  I didn’t particularly want to just throw a CRT at the problem, so here follows my messy but successful attempt to revive the LCD panel at a total project cost of $0.

Click to go through to the photo set.

Backlight Hack - a set on Flickr

Filed under: tech | No Comments »

It feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my crotch. Every muscle in my body, including my toes, hurts. But this is still better than the first day.

The first day I couldn’t fasten my own girth, couldn’t mount, and was just a generally graceless mess. Today I realized that I was using weight aids and my hands were quiet. Its amazing how quickly it all comes back.

We took the horses bareback riding into the pond after we were done with the day’s serious schooling. Going bareback up and down steep slopes uses muscles I didn’t even know I had. It was a lot of fun, and a nice break.

Next week I will start working three horses each day. When I can manage that well, I will be in good enough shape to go ahead and hang my shingle. I hurt a bit less with each passing day. Maybe by the time I’m making money, I won’t hurt at all.

Filed under: family | No Comments »

Last night I was dead tired. As I went to bed I was worrying about sleeping too deeply to be able to jump up and shoot the boogie man, should the need arise. About halfway through the night my brain registered an odd noise in the living room, and I just could not shake off the sleep paralysis in order to do something about it. As I lay there fighting to emerge from the depths of sleep and failing miserably, a voice in my head shouted, “Sudo! Wake up!”. And I did.

Filed under: family | 1 Comment »

I finally found the barn that I’m going to be basing my horse business out of. I’ll be able to show the regional quarter horse circuit with them, and that’s where the real money is. The lady that runs that barn is getting into web design. We are going to be able to do a lot of barter, so it will be a good situation for both of us.

I’m still on good terms with the barn that I bought Jake from, and I’m going to be able to do the local Walker show circuit with them until I get Jake trained and sold.

The possible exercise rider position at the trail horse sales barn is still a possibility as well. I have to wait until the owner heals up from a recent surgery before I can have my riding audition and get started. If that works out he’ll let me do some training out of his place this fall.

All of this business arranging has been accomplished through the power of my references, despite the fact that I haven’t ridden in a few years. Today I got on the back of a horse for the first time in quite a while. I am very out of shape.

I forced myself to ride for an hour, and it took every ounce of self discipline I had. I’ll be riding at least an hour a day from here on out, and I’ve got to add a morning conditioning routine to my schedule as well.

At this rate, I will be skinny by Christmas. I have already lost eleven pounds over the past two weeks. The riding will significantly increase my daily exercise, so I expect the pounds to start coming off even faster. Imagine what would happen if I would actually eat sensibly!

My doctor finally referred me to a specialist for my arm, and I am getting my diagnostic mammogram done tomorrow. I can’t say I see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but at least there is progress.

We got the car back, and it looks brand new! They even detailed the inside and smoothed out some non-accident related blemishes. Now I’ve just got to get a tire for my truck and then all the vehicle woes will be behind us.

I am almost to the bottom of my paperwork mountain, I figured out how to retrofit my pressure canner with modern safety features and will soon be able to start canning, and we are making progress with the bathroom renovations.

Its amazing how many sticks we’ve had in the fire this month, but its all coming together.

Filed under: family | 1 Comment »

We are tearing up the bathroom. The floor was rotting through in a few places, so it had to be done. I put it off until summertime so that we would be able to establish an outdoor shower without the kids telling all their friends at school about it.

So far the floor consists of linoleum on top of plywood, on top of two more layers of linoleum, on top of another layer of plywood, under which we expect to find the original floor. Rights now our sink is in the front yard and the bathroom door is on the back porch.

I am glad that I marked day one of Jake’s training with a blog post.  After checking last night, I was surprised to see that I have only been working him for a week.  It feels like a month.  Although he is technically a gelding, the benefits of the operation haven’t had time to take effect.  He still acts like a stallion; bossy, aggressive, and downright offended that I refuse to let him be in charge.

We have made some progress, though. He comes to the stall door when I open it, though he still fights me when I halter him. He leads fairly well now, without stepping on me, leaning into me, or trying to drag me where he wants to go. He is getting better about keeping his head away from me, which has greatly reduced the biting attempts. He still tries when he thinks I’m not paying attention. He’s learned decent gate manners, which was a big victory. He yields his hind quarters without me having  to touch him, he fairly reliably yields the forequarter given a hard enough shove, and he is starting to back up on command.  He is learning to move off and forward on command, the foundations for the lunging work we’re starting. I even gave him a bath in the cross-ties without a complete and total meltdown.

The cowboys at the barn are itching to ride him just to prove a point. I have no doubt that they could ride him. I could ride him, if I wanted to pick that fight. They can’t understand why I keep messing with him from the ground, and its eating them up with impatience. What good does it do me to have a rideable horse if I can’t get him from his stall without him trying to bite my face off or run me over? First things first.

Andrews parents bought the kitties catnip infused cardboard scratchers. They came with a bag of extra catnip for refreshing the scratchers. Guinness now lives on her scratcher, just to prevent any of the other cats from getting near it. She doesn’t even like us to get near it. Meanwhile the rest of the kitties raid the cupboard every night, trying their best to get that catnip bag open.

I am still way behind on general paperwork. I am coming to loathe office time. It doesn’t matter that the pile is shrinking. Regardless of the fact that it is smaller, it is still there.

The boys are home this weekend, a rare occurrence. We are getting ready to sit down for a Star Trek marathon. Tomorrow we are heading to Florence to visit Andrew’s parents, and they will get to go swimming over there for the first time. On Sunday we are visiting our friend Doug, who had a stroke and is living in an assisted care facility.

I was warned not to read Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” series because he died before finishing it. I didn’t listen. I have just finished the tenth and last book. There is no conclusion, nor is one forthcoming. Sometimes I have to learn things the hard way.

We’re having to rethink the Burning Man trip due to gas prices, which is a big let down. I’m not sure what the outcome will be. We have discussed hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail instead.

I now have everything I need for canning except for a pressure canner. I am itching to can stuff. I am trying to see if my old one can be retrofitted with the new safety features.

Ok, last tangent…

I have never made much use of Google Library, although search results have led me to it a few times. Today I found an awesome book that combines my Confederate roots with my love of poetry, a collection entitled “War Poetry of the South“. It was worth logging into the Google Library service in order to save it. I have to say that this is a pretty awesome service, something I will be making a lot more use of. You can download any book in text or pdf format, create libraries of books, and write reviews. This will help me get back into reading the classics, something I’ve been putting off because I didn’t want to allocate money to buying print editions.

Night ya’ll!

Filed under: family | 1 Comment »

Simon died. He was in really rough shape when I caught him, and should have gone straight to the intensive care unit at the veterinary hospital. I just didn’t have the money for that and they couldn’t take him in pro bono or even at reduced rates, so I did the best that I could at home. I realize that I can’t save them all, and that I can’t short the mortgage payment to pay vet bills. Still, I am fighting the guilt.

We are in week two of Jake’s training. For the most part he is manageable on the ground, though there are still some “Who’s in charge?” moments. I’m going to start him on the lunge line today and I think I’ll start riding him towards the end of this week.

I have an opportunity to ride for pay at a local barn, but I have to pass a riding “audition”. There’s no telling what they’ll put me on. I had really hoped I could find a nice broke horse to work with for a few weeks before progressing on to the hooligans, but it just doesn’t seem to be working out that way.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the prudence of returning to what is essentially a high risk career. At first glance, horse training appears much more dangerous than computer programming. But when you look at it closer, a desk job has its own risks. All of this extra weight that I’m carrying around and most of my back pain is directly related to sitting at a desk typing for hours on end, day after day, year after year.

When working with a horse, I know the dangers and I know how to avoid them. Sometimes you can’t avoid it and you get hurt. But, barring a broken neck, most of the injuries I could sustain horseback riding can be healed and I could get on with my life. I’ve certainly had my share of nasty horse injuries already, and in the long term none of them have caused me lingering grief.

One thing I can guarantee is that I’ll be skinny and fit by next year if I continue to pursue a horse training career.  That will reduce my risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other lifestyle diseases. Those types of illnesses aren’t always easy or even possible to cure, and directly affect quality of life for the rest of your life.

In the end, I think horse training is the healthier decision.

Filed under: family | 2 Comments »