AdmiNirvana

Being a polymath I tend to get asked questions on a lot of different things.   Over the years, I’ve often wondered how many wasted minutes were spent deflecting questions with a question regarding the original question.   Anyone in a support-type role knows what I’m talking about, but for the sake of illustration bear with me this example:

Q: Hi Brian, I don’t remember the username.

A: “Username” for what?

Clearly there is an expectation of telepathy, which I have not quite mastered as of yet.   To further cement my issue, allow me another example:

Q: I don’t remember what directory we put that stuff in, do you?

A: What stuff?

My point is, that if you’re initiating a conversation with a question, and you’d really like an answer to that question, try to ensure there is no questioning its completeness.   Here is a wrong/right example:

Q – WRONG: Where did you download that thing from?

Q – RIGHT: The program you used to connect to server2 via the keyboard yesterday… where did you download it from?

As a general rule of thumb, if your question contains any of the following words:

• thing
• stuff
• place

It probably needs some adjustment.

Try to remember the person attempting to answer your question may be juggling dozens of different things, probably has hundreds of numbers, passwords, and other data to remember, and would greatly appreciate the reduced mental workload a few extra words provides.

Your favorite support person will thank you!

I have been itching to get Time Machine to work over a (unsupported) network-shared volume since we’re unwilling to drop the cash for a Time Capsule.  I’ve seen quite a few different posts on how to get it done, including the terminal trick to tell Time Machine to use unsupported volumes, but none of them quite worked.

The best I could get was Time Machine to begin to write the files to the share, but after a few seconds die with a vague “Backup disk could not be created error”.  This stumped me for a bit until I came across this.  Apparently sometime around 10.5.2, Apple introduced a new, undocumented “feature” to Time Machine that causes it to fail over network volumes when doing the initial backup.   However, once the files are created it will work fine.

So, the magical combination is as follows:

• CentOS 5 with Netatalk-2.0.3 compiled, installed, and configured per this post.  Note: I also had to modify etc/cnid_dbd/dbif.c with the same code change as specified there, but YMMV.
• OS X Leopard, patched to 10.5.4.
• Changes to Netatalk’s netatalk.conf file per this post at the Gentoo Wiki.
• Following the post linked above precisely.

Once that happened, Time Machine has begun to work great over AFP to our backup volume–even for multiple Macs connecting to the same share. Behold!

It probably doesn’t need saying; but this is clearly an unsupported way to use Time Machine.  It has been running this way for me only about a day.    If you’re concerned about having to troubleshoot problems that may pop up down the road, especially regarding backups; picking up a Time Capsule is probably a far better idea.

Last night Phaedrah and I were just messing around, and we started trying to write in cursive/longhand on a pad of paper.

After scratching my head a bit–I came to a quick realization that I cannot even use it now.   Other than simply signing my name, it’s completely awkward and cumbersome.  Even trying to write out a simple sentence took me a minute or so.  Phaedrah’s, on the on the other hand; looks perfect.

Which got me to thinking–even my “normal” handwriting (comprised of mostly slop capital block letters) is pretty illegible.  I  find myself hurrying trying to finish a word, and I’ve come to the conclusion  it’s because I can type it far faster and just print it.    Writing gets annoying because it’s too slow.   When I do have to write something, it gets me annoyed and I try to do it as fast as I can.

Am I the only one who uses a computer so much that simple handwriting is becoming troublesome?

So, yesterday Jason and I were out working on putting in a new gas tank sender in the truck, when down the street comes the Persimmons/Ice Cream Lady in her ice cream truck.

The Persimmons/Ice Cream Lady is pretty nice, a bit quirky, and she loves persimmons. We’re ‘lucky’ enough to have a nice and healthy persimmons tree in our back yard, and in the fall she comes by and takes all the ripe ones she can put into boxes to make various foodstuff out of. Last year it worked out to about one hundres persimmons, which I’d otherwise have to pick up–rotting–on the lawn in the spring.

That’s perfectly fine by Phaedrah and I since neither one of us particularly like persimmons. In fact, they’re kind of gross. But the Persimmons Lady likes them, so that is all that matters. It keeps our yard tidy.

Anyway, down the street comes the Persimmons/Ice Cream Lady. At first, I tune out the jingle blasting out of the truck, but then I realize it’s none other than “Intermission” by Tool, one of my favorite bands.

I wave her over, mostly to explain she’s using a progressive-metal band  as her ‘happy’ ice cream truck song. She tells me it is indeed “funny sounding”, but was all she could find that would fit. I simply explain it’s a tad “dark” (the song is in a minor key, of course).

Laughing aside, I buy an ice cream sandwich for Phaedrah and she goes on her way blasting Tool for the masses to hear.  By far, the coolest ice cream truck song ever.

Well, someone decided to have a little fun at our expense last night.

The Tundra, common name “super-ultra-truck”, or also occasionally known as “The Silver Bullet”, was found dead by a tow-truck guy on the side of Airport Road early this morning.

Apparently someone managed to break into it–right in our driveway–and then take it out and have a little fun. They ended that fun by doing some jousting with a tree. The tree won.

The Van also suffered a minor molesting, but nothing horrible: just some change thrown on the floor.

We haven’t been able to see it yet as it is the weekend and the tow-truck guy is “out of service”, but according to the office personnel we won’t be driving it any time soon.

Truck: You were a good truck, a bit underpowered at times, but a good tow vehicle nonetheless. But I’m still sorry I blew a couple hundred bucks in new brakes for you a month ago.

UPDATE:

We just heard back from the insurance company: