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Friday, 18 May, 2012

18 May

Yesterday was pretty much errand day, as I got nothing accomplished at home. I spent the day at the doctor’s office in the morning (tri-monthly checkup), having my Honda serviced in the afternoon and going to the North Idaho Mineral Club meeting in the evening. That left no time at all to do any of the many things that need doing around here. It was also 66 miles total driving. Good thing the car is getting 51 MPG right now.

I will also be going to the Northwest Federation of Mineralogical Societies (NFMS) Convention and Gem Show on Saturday. That is in Kennewick WA, so that will also blow the middle right out of another day. Although that one will be interesting. 8-)

 

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Thursday, 17 May, 2012

17 May

I finished the sign I was working on for the gem show. It needs to be stiffened, though. I am thinking of putting a strip of lightweight cardboard on the back of the vinyl banner material to straighten it out.

 

Here is how it works when you lose something. You look for it in the place you always keep it, then you look for it in all the places you used it. Then you expand the search to cover all the places where you could have used it.

Finally, when you can’t find it anywhere and you’ve looked at least twice everywhere, you go to the store and purchase another one. That is what I did with the socket wrench I couldn’t find. Then I went to put the new socket wrench away after using it and imagine my surprise to find my original wrench right where it should have been. It was hiding under a hammer in the bottom of my toolbox.

I used the socket wrench to help me take the chrome off of my Plymouth. I still have a lot of chrome to remove, but I will have to wait until I get back from town this morning. Some of that chrome may be tough to remove, as it is held on by clips instead of screws or bolts.

 

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Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

16 May

I worked on signs for the gem show yesterday. Creating vinyl signs is not as easy as it sounds. The hardest part is lining up all those letters. I will finish up today.

I also did a bit of yardwork, but it got too hot to do that. I should finish that up today, too.

 

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Tuesday, 15 May, 2012

15 May

Yesterday I worked on signage for the upcoming gem and mineral show. I got all the pieces for sign holders and all the pieces for one sign. The hardest part was finding the vinyl banner material for the sign itself. I should finish up one sign today, which I will use as a demonstrator for the mineral club meeting on Thursday.

 

I started to take the chrome off of the Plymouth yesterday, but I have misplaced my ratchet wrench, and I can’t unbolt some of the chrome with a normal wrench. I am still looking for that ratchet wrench.

 

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Monday, 14 May, 2012

14 May

The Linux Users Group meeting that should have been held on Saturday was cancelled. That means I have another month to fine-tune my presentation and to pick up suggestions for more presentations.

It was actually okay that the meeting was cancelled, as the other meeting I went to for the North Idaho Mineral Club went long and overlapped the time for the users group meeting.

 

The Internet is supposed to be about anonymity and access. When a web site violates both of those principles, I feel that everyone else should know about it so they can avoid the web site.

I was watching an episode of Cooks Country on Friday, and they did an excellent job making beer-battered onion rings. So I went to their supposedly free web site CooksCountryTV.com in order to get a printed copy of the recipe. I was assaulted by requests for my email address instead of the recipe. Even though the recipe says it’s free, you pay by sacrificing your anonymity. Even if you give them an email address, they then request your name, address and other personal information. I will not go to their web site again, and I suggest you stay away, too.

 

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Friday, 11 May, 2012

11 May

I have finished the talk for the North Idaho Linux Users Group that I will be giving at the meeting tomorrow afternoon. My next problem is where to go from here – what subject should I add to the three that I have already talked about? I suspect that I will be talking about specific applications after this.

 

The copying of all my DVD backups from my NAS to an external hard drive is now 10 hours from completion. There has been nary a hiccup in the process so far. 705GB of 875GB has been copied.

 

I did some yard work yesterday. There is a lot that has been neglected and a lot of clean up that is yet to be done. I could probably spend solid weeks doing the work, but there are other things that need doing. Like two meetings for me to attend tomorrow.

I have not yet started taking the chrome off my Plymouth. I think I will do that starting on Sunday. I want to drive the car tomorrow, since it will be a very nice day and I enjoy showing the car off.

 

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Thursday, 10 May, 2012

10 May

I completely fixed the shifting problem with my 1952 Plymouth. Apparently, the shift adjustment had somehow come loose, and had backed itself out by vibration. It had backed out by at least a half inch. I adjusted it to where it was supposed to be and made sure that the two nuts that are the tightening adjustment are tight against one another, so that should not happen again. I took it out to Burger Heaven in Rathdrum to test it out. All the shifting is now much tighter and feels better, which is a good thing.

Now that the shifting problem is fixed, I will strip the chrome off the car. I will then take it over to Spokane to be painted a very nice metallic light blue. I will provide photos when it is all done.

 

I have been doing maintenance and clean up on my video collection. I backed up a half dozen DVDs and copied those to my network attached storage (NAS). I also weeded out 30 videos I will never watch again. I plan to give these to the Hayden Library. I have done that in the past and it worked out well for all concerned. Since I now have only 35GB of free space left in my 1,000GB NAS, I decided to copy all the files to a 2,000GB external storage drive. That will take approximately 50 hours. I started that yesterday and it is still going on, with 33 hours left before it is completed.

 

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Wednesday, 9 May, 2012

09 May

Yesterday, I got most of the talk done for the North Idaho Linux Users Group. I only have one topic left – the clipboard. That should be easy to explain, although I must admit I had trouble with the concept when I was first introduced to it by a radical text editor way back in the CP/M days.

When I actually finish the talk, I will post it with the other Learning Linux talks on the NILUG web site.

 

I have started creating and populating the web site for the soccer program. When it gets into better shape, I will post the link to it here. Right now, there isn’t a single thing to see.

 

I haven’t mentioned here that I went to a small car show on Saturday. it had maybe two dozen cars, but the environment where they were showing was great.

 

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Tuesday, 8 May, 2012

08 May

I worked on my Learning Linux talk yesterday. I am attempting to teach something that is seldom taught directly: how to use the mouse and keyboard with a graphical user interface. This is complicated by the fact that different Linux distributions are configured differently, so the mouse may open files with either one or two mouse clicks.

Fortunately, using the keyboard and the mouse simultaneously to accomplish actions is identical to how you do it in Windows, so that is easy to teach.

 

It was nice enough yesterday that I went out to the garage and did some lapidary work. I finished up an agate cabochon and a crazy lace agate cabochon. To do any more, I will have to cut up some more rock, so maybe I can stay away from that now and get some chores finished up.

 

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Monday, 7 May, 2012

07 May

When I started testing the soccer program, I found that my solution for no printing in the unregistered version did not work. When the program is unregistered, it is supposed to display a print preview, but not allow any printing. The built-in preview screen has a print button and it still worked, despite my best efforts at disabling it.

So I had to add a custom print preview screen to display the printed output, but not print it. It turns out that was a fairly straightforward process, and the program no longer prints when it is unregistered. This is the last change to the program that I know of. I will be doing the web site now.

 

I went to the Rock Rollers Gem and Mineral Show at the Spokane County Fairgrounds on Friday morning. It was a very busy and interesting show. I did notice that there was only one dealer selling equipment there, and that was a local dealer whose store is on Trent Avenue in Spokane. I took pictures of all the display cases, as they always have a very good display there.

I didn’t think of it until I was at the fairground, but I thought I would stop by the Antique Auto Ranch in Spokane and see if I could pick up a part for my Plymouth steering linkage. I was successful there. I had to pull it off of an engine/transmission sitting at the edge of a pile of engines and transmissions in a lot in back of the shop. The engines ranged from 4 cylinder to flathead 6 to straight 8. The part cost me a buck.

The part I got is a hard rubber grommet, which is part of the shift linkage. The one that was on the car was half missing and it caused the shifting to be very sloppy. I replaced it with the one I got from the Antique Auto Ranch and the shifting is now a lot less sloppy. The reverse problem is also a bit better, but it still isn’t completely fixed. I will have to re-adjust the shifting now that I have replaced that grommet.

 

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