On Tiny Computers
I saw a comment made by one of the phone company CEOs on a commercial implying that a smart phone is all you need. This seems stupid on the face of it. The screen is 3-4 inches big and the keyboard takes up the screen, uses a 12 key pad, or has a tiny flip out keyboard. Of course, the CPU horsepower is very limited due to the demands of battery life.
What if these things were fixed. Some can be fixed today. Imagine a device like an iPhone, which is a tiny computer running Mac OS X, that plugs into a dock like many mobile phones use for charging. The dock plugs into a keyboard/mouse and a monitor much like laptops dock.
The CPU is still very limited so only web browsing and basic office tasks are the fence. This is all most people need. Hit a price point of $600 for a phone computer with $200 for the dock/monitor and you can bring real value to the use. Tack on internet access through the cell phone side for $40-$60/mo.
This is an enticing device. It’s much easier to travel with, but can still expand to the full usability of a computer and you remove one standard gadget. Actually, two since the phones todya come with cameras. Workers who travel and use the computer for remote data entry might find this invaluable.
on Layoffs at CSStars
Ok, the day after.. Yesterday, CSStars fired about 11% of the workforce. 40 in Amarillo, 30 in Chicago, and a few others around the country. The reductions seem to be centered on groups who work with products that we will no longer develop though still support. FNOL and MedBill are mentioned by name in the press release that the CEO Bill Diaz read to us in the afternoon. Something will happen today about how we will be reassigned and then another All Hands meeting tomorrow morning. Combined with the 46 in the Polish office that was closed last week and ~20 in the New York office close several weeks ago the company is ~20% smaller. Certain operations that had been done in-house like custom solutions work and testing will be done by an Indian outsourcing firm who is expected to hire ~50 people. The products will be refocused with the next release of the flagship, Stars Enterprise. Another version of Enterprise is expected to release this year.
These changes seem positive though difficult and very sharp. Products with large capital outlays and dubious futures have been removed. Expensive and legally sticky situations have been avoid by closing whole offices.
The one troubling aspect is the expectation that outsourcing will take care of a portion of the companies responsibilities that it has always found very difficult. Magically, it seems India will just take care of this. No voice has been given to the extraordinary amount of work in requirements analysis, specifications, documentation, and User Acceptance that has to go into out-of-house development of in-house products. This would be better “outsourced” to a small city in the Pacific timezone.
Hopefully, this week will mark the end of the drastic shifts in people.
Cube Upgrades Worth It
So, it’s been a few weeks since the Cube was upgraded; a replacement hard drive (quieter, newer), a new video card (way faster and 16 more memory), and a new CPU (3+ times faster). The Cube is still sitting dissembled on the desk, because the video card can get too hot. That turns it off at random times. And because I’m just lazy. It has been running almost the whole time.
The upgrades make the Cube useful in 10.4. It’s no speed demon, but is quite acceptable. I’ll list the problems below. Most are minor annoyances or observations. I like the Cube and it is my main machine right now. The case is attractive. The noise is hardly noticeable now that the hard drive isn’t emitting high pitched whines. This was a good experience.
I would like to get a game or two. SimCity 4 and something else that works on a G4 1GHz or something and try that out. The specs now exceed the original in all respects by 2-3 times.
You can’t multitask as much, because it starts slowing down as you add tabs to the browser and running apps. Coming awake from sleep mode has a ~30 pause, though the mouse and keyboard seem to work that’s an illusion.
Firefox sucks donkey balls on G4 computers. Camino and Safari work well. I like Camino a bit better and miss my FF AdBlock/FlashBlock plugins.
DosBox for Colonization can’t play in full screen. You have to drop the resolution to 800X600 and play in a window. This consumes on average 90% of the CPU. iTunes can play in the background with a rare stutter while you play.
You can’t tell what will make the video card overheat. High resolutions make it worse, but not always. Sometimes I think it would be fine sealed up and sometimes it would melt and take the whole board with it. I’m betting a fan before reassembling it completely.
The hard drive is very cool. The big CPU fins never seem hot. The L3 Panaflow fan in the kit is quiet nice.
The network is not as snappy as Intel Macs. Minor little delays when first connecting. BTW, Macs feel much snappier than Windows when working with the network. Win2K was coughing up something trying to transfer 8 gig. Mac started doing this a little, but fixed itself. Maybe an issue with NIC caching and default settings or traffic or OS caching of massive (in that day) files. Who knows.
iTunes is good. Don’t turn on Genius.
Not upgrading to 10.5. No Motorola disks and I don’t care.
On an aside; I’m loving the big G4 566 Digital Audio in the closet. It is very quiet and a great file server. Works well with the Cube.
Would love to stuff two caseless Mac Minis or a Mini and AppleTV in a Cube or Cube Clone case.
Carl Rove
We should all thank or curse (depending on your position) Carl Rove for having pushed and incompetent, ignorant, buffoon into the office of President. Without the stunning number of issues Mr Bush has created a woman or minority male would never have made it into the office right now.
Now, if only all those who committed crimes while in office were punished for them.
House Projects
Dang it. My legs are tired.
The blog hasn’t been updated in a little while, but writing has stopped. There’s a tonne (British) of stuff to post from the past two weeks. The start the latest projects have been coming along well. I would still be at it if I could stand.
The MBR door is closer to down. Just not smooth enough.
A few of the other doors still have issue. Only one has been hung, but that’s because a closer look at things got me off on other details. And because these doors are kind of shitty. The installer messed up the spade drilling of the keyset and I did the same thing on the Master Bathroom door. The wood veneer is very, very thin and weak. Still haven’t figure out how to fix this so it doesn’t show.
When I got to looking at the hinges I discovered a beautiful coppery brass on the side that hasn’t seen the light of day in 40 years. This set me off to removing all the hinges on all the doors, boiling to remove the old paint, and polishing mostly clean. Then I noticed the closest doors had not been painted on the inside. Those two went into the garage for a sand/prime/paint job. One is done and another will be done in the morning.
Also, the pantry door doesn’t hand quite right and previous attempts to fix it only work for a little while. Turns out it has unique, sealed, aged bronze hinges and the screw holes in the door frame and door are huge. This is also an air intake for the AC. There are cheaply installed grilles on the bottom and when you close it they thrum. This is its own project. New grilles, which might mean on the other doors with grilles and some way to stop the thrumming. The screw holes have been wood filled and sanded. The door is being painted.
There’s still the matter of the steel backdoor, it’s replacement trim, and the laundry room cabinet doors. The door primed up well and it’s painted. I used a brush and the lines from primer and paint blend to give it a wooden appearance like the other doors. Cheap easy trick. The trim finished sanding and priming last weekend. This weekend was painting and installing. That went well. Love the pneumatic nailer. White wood filler in the corners and in a bead between the door frame and trim. All to kill the dark 3d lines that our eyes are good at picking up. Still needs a light touch up.
The laundry room cabinets have been very time consuming. To my great annoyance they don’t fit. F**k! Too narrow. I installed them anyway to get them out of the way and feel the the room was more complete. It also shows what the room and by extension the kitchen and maybe bathrooms will look like. Except for the dark spaces between each door it looks very good. I made some mistakes when I was staining; color variations and the edges aren’t good. It’s ok for a laundry room.
The pattern for all the other cabinets will probably been new doors worked up by myself with the current off white color on the frames and antique brass hinges and pulls. The doors are smooth without any pattern to make them easy to clean. Same goes for the handles. The wood grain is the pattern to present a natural feeling mirroring the floor.
Some of the research into natural methods of staining and painting have presented some other options. Tung oil and variations might be an alternative to polyurethane. I’m looking for sustainable, effective, very long term, safe (non-toxic) products. ‘Poly’ is plastic which is not good for the environment, is toxic, and photo-degrades. Tung oil (pure) is from a nut that can grow on most continents. It seals the wood and can be used in marine environments. Surprisingly, it’s edible in the pure form. Most of what you can buy in hardware stores has been mixed with petroleum distillates to alter color and evaporation time. People with nut allergies might have a reaction. Repairing nicks and cuts is very easy. The section is lightly sanded and the the oil reapplied a little at a time over a couple of days. A similar action with poly sealed wood is to remove, sand the whole piece, and reapply. The question is whether the color will match the floor.
Let’s see..
The window sill is ready to install. Though that brought up the issue of the window. I like plants in the windows and that room would be great for holding a garden window sticking out of the house and holding two rows of houseplants. That window and the kitchen window would be good garden windows for cooking herbs.
This week I was thinking about the laundry room, all laundry rooms really, and making Christmas presents, and what else I could door to clean up the appearance, reduce lines, and remove places for dust and dirt to collect. Spaces behind the washer and dryer are magnets for dirt, fuzz, and powder light dust. The machines have to pull away from the wall for all the connections to fit leaving a place for things to fall into. So, I drew up places for a kind of table shelf that can “seal” in the cables, cords, and hoses. The tricky part will be making it easy to access. Every design includes a hinge to flip up the shelf top and gain access. Cords have to come out too. This is the next project and that will be about all I can think of.
For now.
More Milk Paint Links
http://www.milkpaint.com/about_history.html - A brief history of milk paint
http://www.pioneerthinking.com/milkpaint.html - Milk Paint Formula
http://dundean.com/tips_milk_paint_how_to_use.shtml
http://www.appropedia.org/Curdled_milk_paint_recipe - Curdled milk paint recipe
http://www.houseinprogress.net/archives/000537.html - Removing 100 yr old milk paint
http://www.ecowise.com/product_info.php?products_id=140 - Eco Wise Milk Paints
http://www.dairy-info.org/cm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=61
http://dans-woodshop.blogspot.com/2008/07/milk-paint.html
http://www.vintagepaintworks.com/vmp.html
http://www.no-wood-unturned.com/images/milkpaint/milkpaint.html
http://www.howardhallfarm.com/greenpaintinfo.html - Adv/Disadv all Eco Paints
http://www.querycat.com/faq/9cbbc80a94b3c36ff0f725111daa1f9c
http://www.homesteadhouse.ca/faqs/ - Good Notes on Milk Paint
Disadvantages
Milk Paint becomes very hard making it highly durable and equally difficult to remove. It is susceptible to water and has to be sealed. Limited or no color matching. Not locally available?
Advantages
Durable, won’t fade, cheap, biodegradeable, non-toxic though the lime ingredient by itself is dangerous, shipped as a water mixable powder, textured classic look. Ingredients, except untreated milk, are readily available.
Possibilities
Some Milk Painted structures have last hundreds of years. Perhaps sealed milk painted wood might be a good eco friendly covering for wood exposed to the elements.
Eco Friendly Paint Links
http://www.bioshieldpaint.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13&products_id=293
http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/realmoney/articles/paints.cfm
http://www.ecowise.com/index.php?cPath=21_132
http://www.environmentalhomecenter.com/home.shtml
http://www.infinitehealthresources.com/Store/Resource/Article/85/1/1138.html
http://www.getwithgreen.com/2008/03/31/paint-finishes-home-depot-offers-eco-friendly-paint/
Catch Up Notes
Added legs to the old backdoor turning it into a tall work table in the garage. Smaller doors would work better for this. The hollowness of the door doesn’t make a good workbench. Had to screw some spare plywood sheets on top to ensure that the screws going through the door into the legs hold. Doors make good table. The hole for the door knob in the middle makes a good pass through for electric cords.
The door installers sucked.
The stain that most closely matches the floor is Pecan, though the dark streaking of the floor isn’t brought out by the stain. Funny how that works out since there are 5 Pecan trees in the back yard. I reviewed 6-8 different stains. Possibly I-something Pine + Honey(?) Oak. The oak is much better at bringing out the dark streaks in the wood. Maybe a 1/10 addition of oak stain to pine would really match the flooring.
This weekend I removed the MBR door and began finishing it. Staining the MBR door is not as high quality as I would look. Staining is hard.
On several doors I removed all or one hinge, boiled the hinges to remove the paint, and polished them. Now, I have to chisel out the hinge insets in the new doors and get more hinges to boil and polish. Lowe’s no longer carries my beautiful, heavy, shiney, copper(?) tinted hinges. All hinges now are cheap steel painted gold and marketed as bronze. Rather gaudy, ostentatious, and a little ugly.
Bought the remaining wood and hinges for the laundry room cabinet doors. Sanded the shit out of the crappy wood and routered the edge to match the existing doors. Looks good. Feels great. Ready to stain like the MBR door.
Got the materials to fix all the doors; replacement trim, exterior white paint, QRound for outside…
Finished “The Places in Between”. Laptops rock. Need another set of iPod speakers for the garage. That covers the kitchen, bedroom, and garage. The computers play in the office.
The cabinet doors set the style for the kitchen. Right now I’m thinking, replace the doors, hinges, pulls with single sheet pecan stained boards with antiqued bronze hardware. Repaint with the off white trim color. Replace stove, stove top, faucet, counter top, hood, etc. More work to do.
Would love to door the kitchen next, but should really need to do the two bathrooms next. One right after the other.
Looked at Windows. A window by itself is $100. Doesn’t look hard to knock out and replace. What gets me is the use of plastic on everything and the inattention to detail like mold lines. Also, the window is bordered more widely than the old steel windows. This reduces the amount of light by reducing the hole size for light. Another thing is that plastic is going to make a sucky window component, because it is photoreactive. No matter what you do plastic falls apart under the sun unless it is painted or shielded.
The replacement materials available at Lowe’s and I assume at most places is quite disturbing. Materials are made as cheaply as possible and maintenance is not reasonable or possible.
Compare the materials in my house, which are 40+ years old vs the current materials. The windows are now steel, single pane, cold in the winter, and feel very lossy. The new ones are plastic and will degrade in ~25 years becoming brittle and prone to crack around the glass. This forces the windows to be complete replaced.
The door hinges are solid metal. I was able to removed them after 40 years, clean off the paint, polish, and reapply. The new hinges are painted bronze. Polishing will remove the paint and leave steel. So, in 40 years if the paint is still on them they have to be replaced completely. Cleaning and reattaching is not really an option.
Really anything that is plastic is suspect, especially if it faces the sun. Glass, concrete, steel, wood, hair, and plant fibers are better materials. They are either long lasting or easily repair and replaceable. Plastics leak toxic materials into the home. Be aware that polyurethane on wood evaporates over time.
blah bluh blah blah blah
No one’s getting to the bottom of this post. Even I’m bored by now.
Issues
This must be the obligatory quarterly loneliness pity party.
I’m hurting pretty badly and have been for some time. It’s really, really lonely. I’ve driven off or drifted away from just about everyone. This is felt all the more sharply for having gotten out of my shell this summer and hanging around Sara. The thought of going back to the way I was is intensely frustrating. But I don’t know what else to do. My confidence of being around other people and having a positive, engaging, attractive persona and attitude is shot. It’s much more likely that I’ll say something stupid and insulting to them.
I’m so angry. Furious that things have backfired and turned out the opposite of what I expected and what I wanted at the beginning of this year. There’s always been a lot of anger inside. For years I swallowed disappointments, frustrations, and insults. Sometimes it was an attempt to be magnanimous or to keep from jumping to the wrong conclusion or for fear that conflict would end a relationship. It’s so close to the surface now and the only one left to be angry at is me.
I’m so angry that I can’t put it into words. It stays there not dissipating. This is not how my life was supposed to go. If I had only done this or that, performed better, tried harder..
There’s not anyone that I can talk to. No one has that I feel connected to. Gma even goes through a similar kind of thing, but her outlook is very different. Jessica is somewhat similar, but doesn’t talk about it. Christopher is gone. Mom never really was there and she’s going through her own issues. Heather and I are just polite. Patience is very much going through something, but Adam and her ex take time. Actually, no one in my family connects, though Christopher is the closest. Rebecca is tempting, but it’s so bad this time I don’t want to be seen like this. I must be leaking negativity out all over the place and with other people I can put up a sufficient front.
In one direction I’m furious and hate myself with a passion I used to feel for programming. In another is absolute terror at truly answering what I want to do with myself, standing up for myself, and being honest. There is fearing of asking for help and being judged. This likely either leads to accepting my current mundane, droll existence or facing my fears. In the middle is me.
I want to choose to make myself choose the leap of faith and facing my fears. That’s why I slowed talking to my family. It hasn’t gone well. I’m very stubborn and scared.
Repeated attempts to distract myself with games, gadgets, programs, projects all fail except the therapeutic ones around the house like painting and staining. These progress slowly as issues come up. This cycle has repeated so many times I can even tell when I’m putting myself on with another grand thing.
I’m so afraid of being myself that I block memories of the good advice I have gotten from Bridget and Rebecca. It’s surreal to see yourself purposely forgetting something as the other person is talking. Since I can’t seem to answer the question of what to do with myself I think that means I’m also blocking the answer.
I’m pretty despondent over this whole thing. No friends. No advice. No one understands. No confidence about meeting other people. No help. Everything seems to remain the same. This is a depressing life and it just seems to stretch on in front of me. I’m afraid of doing anything different. It might make it worse and I know not to trust myself to make it better.
My plan is to continue working on the Laundry room, reading 1-2 books a week, and wait. Hopefully, this feeling with lift, shift, or dissipate and I’ll basically be where I was this spring like last spring. I was pretty upbeat and hopeful then. It takes months to get that way.