a hundred degrees

Successful Searches

Some questions are difficult to put to search engines.

I've been watching enough soccer on Spanish language television lately to wonder why they abbreviate USA as EEUU. It took a number of tries to find a way to ask a computer that gave results that included an answer.

Acronym Finder told me only that it stood for "Estados Unidos (United States)." Um, I'm only counting one "E" and one "U" in those words. What are those other letters for? El Estados Unidos de Umerica?

Search for "EEUU" and you'll get lots of sites that use the abbreviation but don't tell you why. You may notice that some of them show use periods on the abbreviation, but only in two places: "EE.UU."

I Asked Jeeves "What does EEUU stand for" and found a site that asked the question but did not answer it. Another site told me that Estados Unidos used to be part of the name of any number of central american "republics" but it would be a bad joke to call any of these folks estadounidenses.

Finally I found a link to an article at About.com (popups are not a problem if you disable javascript) that cleared it up. Turns out that similar to page and pages (p. & pp.) the letters are doubled to show the plural. We also do this with manuscript and manuscripts (ms. & mss.).

Another question to which I found the answer today was "How did South Africa end up in the CONCACAF Gold Cup?" South Africa would seem to fall clearly outside of the geographic bounds of the Confederation Of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. For that matter how do they decide who gets to play in this cup at all?

It goes something like this: three teams from North America (Canada, USA, Mexico), three teams from the Caribbean (they have a cup to decide who gets to go), four teams from Central America (I don't know how these advance), and two guest teams. I am something of a geographic idiot, so it took me a couple minutes to pick out Columbia as the other one that didn't fit.

Privacy and Publishing

I haven't talked about the soccer thing much. I guess that I've read too much security literature to feel comfortable discussing other people's children on the internet. I probably shouldn't write so much about mine. Or me. Heck, this whole personal blogging thing really reduces the need for dumpster diving.

I guess that the criminals are at least partly to blame for the way an interconnecting technology like the internet is causing us to separate and insulate. Well, and lawyers. Lately it is difficult to tell which is the more educated and/or dangerous group. Identity theft, getting dooced, child endagerment... how quickly a few bad apples spoil the barrel.

TypeKey Finally Working

If you tried to sign up for a TypeKey account so that you could leave me a note that would show up right away, you will have seen the message that the administrator has not enabled that feature. I figured out that the site can only handle one key for all blogs instead of one for each. Once I set mine to match Manasclerk's all was well.

MT Version Upgrade

Manasclerk upgraded our version of Movable Type yesterday, so the posting and commenting were not happening. We've gone from 2.661 to 3.15. I need to rework my comment templates. Until I do, all comments will be moderated, that is, they won't show up on the site until I approve them. When I get the time to look at the templates and do the changes, there will be a way for you to log in and have your post show up immediately. The good news is that this means that though I still get spam comments, you won't see them published.

One Year Mark

I planned not to write about the fact that this is my "blogiversary" but I didn't plan what to write about, so here I am. I have missed several stretches while out of town, but generally have written something every day for the last year. Perhaps I have grown somewhat more accustomed to putting words together, which occasionally comes in handy on the job, so I'll claim that as the main benefit and not make any more of it.

Thanks to everybody who has seen fit to leave there comments here. Thanks particularly to you seven or eight regular readers for the gift of your time and attention.

ADDED: And I would be sorely remiss if I failed to thank manasclerk for the use of his server. Gracias, Amigo!

Squeezing the Window

The sidebar on the right side has been shoved down below the banner so that folks with narrower than 800 pixel screen widths won't have to scroll to the bottom of the sidebar to start reading the posts. Right now it will work pretty well down to a width of about 500 pixels. Of course, when I post pictures, then their width will probably force them below the sidebar at narrow window widths, causing posts to be broken up. Costs and benefits...

UPDATE: I went ahead and added the Show/Hide Sidebar line at the top of the sidebar, and some accompanying javascript to make it functional. My current implementation is not valid XHTML and for some reason hides the dotted line under "Search" in IE. I'll keep working on it.

Motherboard Woes?

Some time back, my internet connection on my desktop ceased to work. I thought that it was probably a software problem, so I loaded XP on my spare hard drive. Still no go. So I went and bought a PCI Ethernet card. My computer refused to see it. I remembered to disable the on board LAN and it still didn't see it. I tried updating the driver from the disk. No joy. When I re-enabled the on board LAN it started making my computer freeze for about three seconds out of every five. Tonight I borrowed a USB Ethernet adapter from Lyle. It's working great. I'm concerned about the motherboard. I'm really not looking forward to trying to get support out of ACS.

RSS 2.0 Feed Dressed Up

Jumping aboard the bandwagon for RSS, I downloaded SharpReader. I noticed that the default feed from Movable Type didn't have some of the nifty features I was seeing elsewhere. I changed it to feed full entries rather than excerpts, added an image and some comment information.

MT actually provides two RSS feeds. I didn't mess with the 1.0 version at index.rdf only the 2.0 version at index.xml. Incidentally I copied my template over Manasclerk's 2.0 template as well. (Even fixed up your image, dude!) The link on his sidebar points to the 1.0 version, so grab his prettied up feed here.

..........

I still can't get the network connection to work on my home desktop computer. I've run ad-aware and spybot. They found a couple minor things, but no large-scale infection. I guess I'll try reinstalling the OS. I've got to do some serious copying of files first, though.

Returned The Monitor

I guess it comes as no big surprise that I took the six hundred dollar monitor back to Office Depot. While I can't say that the collision and electrical repairs are entirely unrelated, I have to admit that I can't really see getting six hundred dollars of value out of it at this time. If I were working from home, not just blogging, even as much as two nights a week, then I could justify it. As it is, I can't find time to play games on the PC, much less do something productive.

I didn't have to make up a story for the return clerk, though. I'll try and remember this for any other large item I want to return: "There's nothing wrong with it. I wrecked my car and now I can't afford [this thing] anymore."

Anti-Midas Touch

While fixing a flub on the post below, my network connection died on my home desktop. I'm doing this on my wife's laptop. She's brave to let me touch it.

If I were a televangelist I'd be telling everybody about my holiness since we are obviously under serious satanic attack.

Bluetooth USB

I picked up a Bluetooth USB adapter tonight so that I could get the pictures off my phone. I've previously used a tablet PC that I no longer have access to and Paul's iPOD which is in for repairs.

The phone is not my personal phone, it belongs to the bank. Still, forty bucks seemed like a good deal for getting pictures on the blog in a timely fashion.

I'll join many others by sharing a shot from RLP's virtual book signing. Though my favorite is the Superhero shot on Michael Main's site.

New Monitor

I went and got a new monitor. I've got 14 days to decide whether it's worth the money. It's a 19 inch flat screen lcd. I'm moving from a 17 inch crt.

I hooked it up and changed my resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x1024. Lexie looked at it and said, "The words are still the same size, but there's more space on the screen. How does that help?" She maintains that I don't need a new monitor, I need helpful eyewear.

I replied, "The words are still the same size, but there's more workspace!" I would have run 1280x1024 on my 17 inch crt, but apparently in April of 1995 they didn't build them to handle that resolution.

"What do you need all that space for?"

"You don't work with the same types of programs that I do."

"So I should shut up and go away?"

"No, dear. I'm just saying that you and I don't use computers in the same way, and so you can't understand how cramped 1024x768 can feel in, say, Visual Studio with little tool bars and info windows crowding in from all four sides."

Besides, I work on a 17inch flat screen at work running 1280x1024. So to come home and find the words are a little bigger is pretty nice.

There's a special on the 17 inch version of the monitor I've got here. It's about $170 less. I'm not sure, but the special may be ending tomorrow. Perhaps I have less time than 14 days.

Truth. Well, Pravda

I didn't realize that Pravda was available in an English translation. This work was not assigned to someone with extraordinary language skills. It is a grade or two up from an automated internet translator.

I guess I was still thinking that this was an official publication. This article on amazing achievements in physics places it more in the realm of the Fortean Times.

While I'm on about amazing achievements...

You may not have been keeping up lately (actually they don't seem to have been either since the latest news item is from April) so I thought I'd remind you that we're only five years away from the completion of the Atlantic Tunnel. Amazing how they kept it secret for so long. But then with all the violence in Ireland, I guess you wouldn't notice that a tunnel taller than three double decker buses was being dug beneath the entire width of the country. And who spends time under the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?

Titles Everywhere

I added title attributes to all the links on the main page. This makes it even dicier to keep valid XHTML but I like the "tool tips." Hover and enjoy.

Firewall? Oh. Yeah.

I put the question of the noncommunicative computers to Lyle the self employed tech consultant and fellow elder at church. He asked if I was running a firewall. Yeah, Zone Alarm.

I shut down Zone Alarm and the computers talked just fine. I've since poked a hole in the firewall for the internal LAN.

Still Not Talking

I switched the Linksys for a DLink and it's doing the same thing. I'm now beginning to suspect the OS. The laptop is running XP Home. Is that disabled from workgroup computing?

I've got a couple things to try before upgrading the OS to XP Pro. First I'll get a network cable and plug the laptop into the LAN. Then Rob's got a Dell laptop with XP Pro that he'll bring over and see if it will play nice.

Too Much Security

I tried to connect the laptop to the desktop to share the printer today. The desktop would see the laptop, but the laptop wouldn't see the desktop. Apparently the good folks at Linksys designed it that way. So, I'll return the router and get a DLink. Rob says that his works fine for getting all the bits to talk.

Valid Transitional XHTML

I finally got the main page of the blog to be valid. I'm probably not that far from being valid as Strict XHTML, but I'm not going there yet. Mostly since this doesn't really buy me anything anyway. I mean what is really the point? So a theoretical stupid browser could render my blog properly, I guess. Great, that and $3.75 plus tax will get me a cup of coffee.

No Floppy

Lexie's new laptop arrived today. She is very distressed to find that it has no floppy drive. "Everything I have is on floppies!"

I tried to explain the little USB flash drives, but she protested that her students brought their work on floppies. I don't think she's interested in an external floppy drive and it looks like this model doesn't swap with the CD drive easily.

Next we discovered that I did not communicate what "wireless" meant. She believed that she would be able to access the internet from school. It's possible they have access points there but I wouldn't count on it. She says that some other teacher at school "just opens up his laptop and accesses the internet." I don't know anything about what it takes to call the net from what I guess is an integrated cell phone. Can you help me?

She's pretty frustrated by the fact that it appears to not be able to do anything she wanted it to. I need to solve this stuff quickly. We have 14 days to return it for the cost of shipping.

Tech High and Low

On the way home from Comanche Kevin drew this car on his MagnaDoodle. Okay, I added the wheels and told him how to draw the driver's dome. But he did the rest!

I thought it was pretty cool, so I took a picture of it with my camera phone that the bank has so thoughtfully provided me.

Today I got a new tablet PC to play with. The old one did not have a Pentium chip and so failed the hardware check for Cisco's soft phone software. This newer model has Bluetooth, so I connected to it with my phone and transferred my pictures over. Then I plugged in a network cable, authenticated through our firewall and pushed the picture up onto the blog.

All this high tech stuff to bring you a picture drawn on a magnetic erase board.

Epson RX500

My HP Laserjet 5L is misbehaving and my Scanjet 3300C woudn't talk to my computer. So today we dropped $250 at Best Buy for a scanner/copier/printer combo. It was pretty easy to set up. My only issue has been that XP keeps telling me that none of my USB ports are High speed. I'm pretty sure that they should be. I'll have to go check my motherboard documentation.

Anti-Communicative

Several times lately I've found that I have some big stuff weighing on my mind. Exactly the kind of thing I could talk out on the blog. But I don't write about these things. My excuses are that I'm tired and I don't have time to do the subject justice. Or that I'm just plain daunted by the prospect of working out exactly what it is I think I want to talk about. Unexamined, my life feels more important. When I take the time to work through the stuff that I have strong feelings about, I usually find that it's inconsistent and unfounded. What feels like 1800 words boils away to 150, and those of little consequence.

Yet anticipating blogging about these subjects at some point in the future, I don't talk about them to other people. Once I've talked something out, I have no desire to revisit it. Similar to solving application design problems and losing the drive to write the code.

So, I'm letting the blog actually contribute to my introversion. The best laid plans...

Evil Twerps

  I've gotten eight offensive spam-bot comments in the last two days. Until I find out what I can do to combat this nonsense I'm going to remove the comment form. Of course the bot may be posting directly to the .cgi in which case this move will be ineffective, but I'll learn that much at least.
  The jackals who release this nonsense should be hunted down and fed to rats. Hopefully I'll return your ability to give me feedback soon.

Blogfodder

  Michael pointed out the other day that one of the dangers of a daily blog is that when an event like the Saturday bee swarm happens, your second thought is about posting it to the blog. He and I have both made little pacts with ourselves to write something daily. He's been at it longer than I have by about a year. Thing is, some days there just isn't much inspiration. I know that's painfully obvious sometimes on this site.
  Anywho, in the words of J-Lo, "I've been thinkin'" about the value of this exercise. Longterm value, I mean.
  Back in November of 2001 we gave Lexie's dad a book from Hallmark called "A Father's Legacy." It is a book of jounaling prompts. Sid filled in about thirty of them.
  On those days in the future where I have a difficult time scrounging in my brain for something to record about the day, I will try to respond to some of these prompts. I intend to copy in Sid's responses where they occur as well.
  Of course, I won't start today, since I was able to manage a whole entry talking about not having anything to talk about already.

Messing with remarks again

  One of the short-comings of the remark system in Movable Type is that there is no auto email back to folks on a reply-to-a-remark. If Paul leaves a remark on one of my posts and I reply to that remark, he won't get an email with the reply, but will have to check the site.
  A little over a month ago I added the Recent Remarks page which shows the last twenty-five remarks made on the blog. This works well for me, but I'm not sure anybody else uses it to check for replies.
  Today I added abbreviated remarks to the side-bar on the main page. This will show from five to ten remarks. It will list the last five posts to receive remarks and beneath each will be the first forty characters of the last two remarks to that post.
  The point is simply to make any interaction that happens to occur on this site a little more visible.
  I also added the weather pixie to the side bar. I don't know if I'll leave her there or not. It does add a nice spot of color.
  Finally, to keep the growth of the sidebar to a reasonable level, I cut the number of recent entries under each category from five to three.

Recent Remarks

  I've noticed that I've occasionally missed remarks that were made on some of my posts until much later. To give myself an easy way to check the latest, I've added a Recent Remarks page to the blog. You can find the link at the top of the Archives section in the side bar.

Comment Labels

  Manasclerk had some comment problems. I took the opportunity to get rid of those "Trackback" links I wasn't using and to write a little comment link label randomizer. You can get the "RelabelCom" function and the related body script out of the source on the main page.

Scorecard Online

A couple of years back I created a spreadsheet for tracking my Disc Golf scores. I hadn't updated it since 3/16/2002. I decided that I'd start fresh with the scores I've reported to the blog. I've placed the link on the main page and the Disc Golf category page.

Why Am I Doing This?

  There was a recent post over at Real Live Preacher about writing. It generated over sixty comments. So far my entire blog has generated 53 comments. Admittedly, it's a lot less interesting than RLP.
  Anyway, a number of the comments on the writing piece were "why I write my blog" kinds of comments. I wanted to join in, but I realized that these comments were a little off topic. Besides, I need things to write about over here.
  I think that the real answer is kind of silly, but here it is: It's for my mom.
  See, Mom writes email all the time and I almost never reply. I'm terrible about replying to email. So, this is my way of giving her some ongoing news of her son and his family. I like to think of it as the Christmas newsletter that gets updated all year long.
  That's not a bad idea. I'll put the address of my blog in the next batch of Christmas cards. Maybe create a special page with links to the year's highlights.

Bounce it Out

  Wrote a little javascript today so that the links on comment authors open in new windows. It just replaces 'a href' with 'a target="_blank" href'. Simple but effective.
  See, Movable Type generates the links in some place that I don't have access to. That's why I have to make the modifications at run time.

Housecleaning

  I put in a little time today making a couple changes to the blog. I put descriptions on the categories. This was mainly driven by putting an explanation of my scoring code on the Disc Golf archive page. I got rid of the "Dieting" category and reassigned the few entries that were there. I added the "Interior Life" category. I also increased the number of entries on the main page to 14.

newBie on eBay

  The local computer parts discount house did not have the processor I wanted to build my new computer with. So I thought I'd try eBay. I got outbid a couple times and then I found a great dutch auction with 30 chips going at once. I waited until the last minute and then put in a bid that would have secured me one. Except that I hadn't signed in yet. The extra step was just enough delay to cause the auction to close before I got through.
  After getting outbid again, I just went and found a chip at a "buy it now" price which was about $20 more than I wanted to pay, and bought it. I figured that my time was better spent elsewhere and the premium was worth it.
  When the CPU gets here I'll go and get the rest of the stuff locally.

Moved

  I'm going to go ahead and move over here to the Movable Type version on processwrite. I like the fact that there are not arbitrary length limits on comments. I also like being able to categorize entries. I promise I'll work on the templates to make the site friendlier and homier in the coming weeks.
  Thanks, manasclerk, for the use and space.

The Great Big Hairy Spider

Google found me.
I'm at the bottom of page 15 for "john mcjilton".
But I'm number one for "mcjilton blog."
It's the blogger site, but there's a link there now to this one.

Moving To MT

I spent a little while this evening copying comments from blogback to MT. All the dates will be wrong of course, but at least the comments are there.

Back in service

  Of course Kevin asked to play his Thomas game today since the CD-ROM drive failed. This evening I remembered my old 100Mhz Micron that I bought back in 1995. I scavenged the 4x CD-ROM drive from that machine and put it in my drive killing box. I had hoped to just plug in the Micron PC, but the requirements on the Thomas game were for a 133Mhz or faster processor. But they specified a 4x CD-ROM or better, so I got it going. I'm still going to try and put together a new PC in the next few weeks. This one I'm using has a Celeron 400Mhz processor.

Dead Again

  Today Kevin is not feeling well. He threw up snot this morning and then I fed him breakfast. That came back about 75 minutes later. He seems better since then. We'll see if the fruit and milk he just asked for stay down.
  I'm at home so I thought I'd try to get the VPN connection to the bank working. I couldn't get it going under WinME so I thougt I'd install XP on an old hard drive I have. As I was running a search of the CD, the CD-ROM drive failed. So, maybe I'll spend some time today shopping for a new computer.

Obligatory "Look at me! What am I doing" entry

  I'm a little surprised at how many little urges I have to write stuff here. I mean, it's just water cooler time killing stuff. But still, I never really considered that I had much to say. I guess that comes from hanging out with people who talk a lot. I's and D's.
  I still think that after the first 20 or so topics this will have run it's course. Still I'd rather have it than nothing to document my life.
I know that if I considered an audience and spent time editing that there would be much less written. Maybe, just maybe, this is a place to blurt out ideas and random thoughts which will act as a mine for future, more carefully written, pieces. Yeah, I doubt that too.
  Its just a letter to myself. Like all those rehearsed speeches in the bathroom late at night when I was a teenager. Practicing to rail against whatever percieved inequity it was that day. Full of wind and little else. But personally compelling and cathartic. "Hero of my own life" like Manfred Asclerk.

Post

  There's something a little hopeful and despairing about knowing that I've got a place I can log on to and be faced with a blank textarea. Without a prompt. Well, it does say "Post" at the top there. Reminds me of a little town in northwest Texas, and how I always thought that's where they made my cereal. I still can picture the water tower and feel how I'd crave raisin bran.