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Our well pump motor froze overnight. Our first "country" troubleshooting problem. Heh. We put a light bulb shining right onto the motor and put a small space heater in the well house. That unfroze the motor in about 15 minutes, so we have water again. Going to have to beef up the insulation (of which the previous owners left a sufficient supply) and put a small heat lamp on a timer out there.
Better news – it got damn cold last night and the pipes were nowhere near frozen. The pipes going to and from the well pump were actually a little warmer than ambient temperature. I like knowing that.
In a separate problem, our tankless water heater also seems to be frozen. It’s mounted to the side of the house. I don’t know how much insulation there is inside the housing, but I imagine it’s not much if any because the unit itself is fairly small. I’m going to have to come up with a way to keep it from freezing up.
I’ve seen several people I follow on Twitter mention “three words for 2010.” It sounded like an interesting mental exercise, coming up with three words, and only three words, to define what you want to focus on in the coming year. Here’s my take on it.
My three words: Reading, Building, Growing.
Reading – I love to read, but I haven’t been doing enough of it in the last couple of years. I only read about half as many books as I wanted to in 2009. It’s such an enriching and enjoyable thing to do, and I need to spend more time doing it.
Building – This one has two meanings. One, I want to build more things with my hands. I have a list a mile long of things I want to build this year, and I’m eager to get started. Two, I want to build (nurture?) my relationships with people. Friends, family, colleagues. Turn acquaintances into friends. That sort of thing. (An aside: I’m curious to see how much these two parts of Building will overlap.)
Growing – Growing as a person, becoming a better human. I expect Reading and Building to feed Growing quite a lot, but it’ll also have areas of intent all its own.
My biggest gripe about Windows 7 is the impact User Account Control has on the command line. Unless you turn UAC completely off, every time you run something on the command line that Microsoft has deemed requiring your password – even if you’re in the local Administrators group – you get an Access Denied error.
Screw. This. Noise.
This is the “ZOMG!!! If you run things as root you’ll destroy the planet!” Linux model. I don’t like it in Linux, and I definitely don’t like it here. Which mean, yes, when I’m working in Linux I log in as root. Why? One reason is that I want to be able to break things, software-wise. I want to understand why something has broken, how to avoid breaking it again in the future, and how to fix it. Knowing these things makes me a better admin.
The SU/SUDO model doesn’t really stop admins from breaking things, it just gets in their way. Ordinary users need the protection of SU/SUDO, not experienced administrators. It also gets in the way of doing certain things on the command line.
Which brings me back to Windows 7.
Microsoft made UAC much, much better in 7 than it was in Vista. Still, even on its lowest setting, it’s getting in my way. For example, I have a batch file on my computer. Been using it for years. The name of the file is DC.bat and it contains a single line: “defrag c:”. That’s it. In Windows XP, any time I want to defrag the hard drive I hit Windows + R, type “dc” and hit the Enter key. Boom, done. UAC prevents me from doing this in Windows 7, along with a lot of other things on the command line.
Forgive me while I repeat myself: Screw. This. Noise.
I completely understand the need to lock things down on a company network to protect the network from users who don’t know how to not break things, but this is a standalone computer with a single user – me. Also, to toot my own horn, I’m a freaking expert when it comes to Windows. I, and people like me, don’t need to be hamstrung by UAC.
So, finally, I turned it off completely. My computer is now in the undocumented “You’re damned right I’m an expert” mode.
This is a fun little project. I’m giving my small nail gun and chop saw a little workout. It’s not done yet – four more shelves will go on the left, but I have to MacGyver something to work around the electrical wiring that’s just out of view to the left of this pic. Then I’ll do the right side of the stairs, but first I have to rip down the paneling on that side, the same kind of paneling you see on the right of this pic. It’s cheap-ass particle board paneling, so at least it’s easy to rip down.
I received an email a few minutes ago. It was a thoughtful email, right up until the very end.
(Redacted company name) would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!!
May the new year bring you Happiness, Health, and Wealth
Warm Wishes to you and your family,
(redacted name of sender)
At the very end is a legal disclaimer. Allow me to share it with you:
This message is a PRIVATE communication. This message and all attachments are a private communication sent by (redacted company name) and may be confidential or protected by privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the information contained in or attached to this message is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender of the delivery error by replying to this message, and then delete it from your system.
I couldn’t help but notice the part I underlined. It completely ties my hands. I am not allowed to pass along wishes of a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year!!!!!, since that falls under the definition of ‘distribution.’ I do apologize for any appearance of thoughtlessness to which this might lead. It’s not intentional, I assure you.
And yes, I have deleted the email.
I’ve seen a lot of tweets in my twitterstream from apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. These are location-aware apps for the iPhone (Gowalla) and Android (both) that lets you announce to your followers where you are at any given time.
I have to ask: What the heck is the point?
A better question: What’s in it for me?
An even better question: What’s in it for my followers?
Before I continue I’ll admit that I’ve used Foursquare. Twice. But because Foursquare hasn’t added the city I live in – Greensboro, NC – I had to add a place manually, which is extremely awkward to do while using their website in a mobile browser.
And I had to use a mobile web browser because Foursquare has only released its app for the iPhone and Android. Doesn’t do me any good (or about 75% of smart phone owners, for that matter) if they don’t offer an app for any of the other smart phones. (Insert rant that the internet should be platform-agnostic here.)
Back to my last question: What’s in it for my followers? Nothing.
Just as it does me no good to know that one of my followees has become the “mayor of Dunkin Donuts” in NYC, or to read that another of my followees is at a hotel in Los Angeles, it did my followers no good to know that I visited Lowe’s on South Elm Eugene St in Greensboro a couple of weeks ago.
It might be fun to grab a Mayor’s badge in Foursquare, but there’s nothing in it for me when you (and vice-versa) get that badge. At the very most I could engage in a friendly competition with a local friend and followee, but that’s about it. I can’t even do that with followees outside my immediate geographic region.
Honestly, I get more value out of a “I had eggs for breakfast” tweet than these location-aware messages.
By holding down the Windows key and then tapping the left or right cursor control keys you can move a window to fill the left or right half of your monitor. If you have multiple monitors as I do you can also move a window back and forth between your monitors. By using the up and down keys you can maximize, restore, and minimize a window.
I love this new keyboard shortcut and use it quite frequently.
As you know, we just moved into a new house in the country. We’re loving living here. The house, however, has a bit of a sense of humor.
In a heavy rain, water comes in the basement. Not a flood by any means, but about a third of the floor ends up with water running across it. The previous owners left some elbows and tubing, the kind used to extend rain gutter downspouts. In installed them the other day, just in time for the next rain. At midnight, after it had been raining several hours, the basement was dry. I was encouraged. I woke up the next morning and looked in the basement – it was as worse as ever. The extended downspouts only delayed the inevitable.
I could practically hear the house pointing and laughing.
We’re going to take a DIY approach and copy this product: DryTrak Basement Drainage System. We’ll have to do a little excavation for a sump pump, which the house does not currently have, but it should be a fun project. I’ll have to buy a rotary hammer. Bummer, I know.
Next funny: There’s a woodstove in the basement. The thing has to be at least 75 years sold, by the looks of it. The flue goes out the back, makes an immediate 90 degree upward bend, rises about two feet, then makes another 90 degree bend to travel about four feet horizontally and connect with the chimney. That second bend had a crack in it and needed to be replaced. The previous owners of the house had bought a new elbow but had never installed it. Still had the barcode sticker from Lowe’s on it. Well, I installed it yesterday. The new one broke in the exact same spot as the old one.
The short vertical section of flue is about two inches too tall, putting too much stress on the joints in the second bend. So, I have to get another new bend and shorten the vertical section of flue a little.
Yep, the house is having some good laughs at my expense.
I like Windows 7 quite a lot. I’ve been running it for a month now, but I haven’t entered my CD key to activate it yet. There area couple of issues I want to resolve first.
Win7 dumped the Quick Launch Toolbar in favor of what seems to be a hybrid of the Quick Launch Toolbar and the Taskbar. This is a nice improvement over XP. However, there’s one problem: You can’t right-click a shortcut button and get to the properties of that shortcut. This means you can’t modify the path or change the icon of a shortcut button. This bugs me.
The other issue is with the command line. I do quite a lot within batch files. In XP I just hit Windows+R, type in the name of my batch file, and hit the Enter key. Boom, done. Can’t do that out of the box in 7. I need to be able to launch batch files with elevated rights – and yes, my account does have Admin rights. I don’t care much for this new layer of security in 7.
That’s about it though. I like everything else about 7. I have a 3.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 with 3 Gb RAM and performance is wonderful.
If you know how to fix either of these issues, please do let me know. I’d appreciate it.
I know how to tweak XP to within an inch of its life. But then, I’ve been using it for eight years now. I’ll bend 7 to my will eventually.
ETA: AHA! I figured out the first issue. You have to right-click twice – first on the shortcut, then again on the name of the app. You’ll see Properties in the right-click context menu, just like with XP. Excellent.
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