Thirteen years to the day after we said “I do,” Wendi and I officially submitted the documents that say, in effect, “On second thought…”
By way of celebration (of sorts) we took the kids out to Olive Garden for a nice family dinner. All in all, it was a good and fitting end to a quietly momentous day.
Oh, how things change.
Adblock. Flashblock. And a handy-dandy list of prebuilt “rules” for Adblock, collected here. (One can only hope that the bloke in question moves off of Geocities some day.)
Why? Because I finally got sick and tired of the “shoot the monkey” kind of noisy, distracting Flash adverts, and figured that if I’m going to start blocking ads I might as well go all-out. And because I run Firefox, which already lets me block pop-up ads and other annoying crap.
Consider this part PSA, part note-to-self.
By the by: Flashblock can be configured to allow specific sites automatically, so for instance you can go to Tools —> Extensions, double-click on Flashblock in the list, and add in “www.neopets.com”. The really neat part is that Flash hosted on the Neopets site itself will still work, but off-site adverts won’t. Neat.
The anime site is now running WordPress 1.5, and so far I’m quite impressed with the product, the improvements, and the upgrade process. (Don’t worry, Matt. I’m not leaving MJ any time soon.)
I’m the same guy who pounces on every available update to video card drivers, Gaim, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and… well, just about every other bit of software I run, server- or client-side. Versionitis? Yep. But in my defense, it’s worth pointing out that most of the software I use gets better with every release.
Besides, it gives me something to do when I’m bored…
So while Mari and Doug are off visiting folks, I’m holding down the fort at their place. This mainly involves caring for and interacting with their two cats, but that’s not such a bad deal. They have an incredibly nifty house in a relatively peaceful neighborhood, so that’s an upside. The downside is commuting and shopping, but I guess that’s what happens when the guy who doesn’t drive spends a lot of time in the land of the well-wheeled.
Such is life, eh?
In other news, Wendi and I went to the mandatory parenting class this morning. Oddly enough, it wasn’t entirely boring and tedious. There were a few nuggets of useful information, and even some hints that maybe, just maybe, we’re doing this whole “divorced parents” thing halfway-okay.
I’ll take all the encouragement I can get, you know?
So for the rest of the day I think I’m going to kick back, veg out and enjoy my extra-long weekend. You should do the same. You’ve earned it, haven’t you?
So let’s see…
The speakers sound a helluva lot better than the old Altec Lansing 2.1 set I’d been using, and are moderately stylish to boot. (Of course, I’m sure I can find a good use for the Altec set.)
All this and I don’t have to work tomorrow (barring emergencies). Mega-Yay!
On the “not-so-yay” side, I’ll probably be without my favorite gaming addiction for a week or so while I housesit for Mari and Doug. Ah well. There’s a megaton of anime I haven’t gotten around to watching ever since, well, the advent of the gaming addiction. So fear not, friends, for I’m sure I’ll be able to keep myself amused. Somehow. Heh.
Geeky Side Note: This, folks, is entry number 1111. Bwahahaha.
We have almost 20 Cybex “chassis,” rack-mounted enclosures that can contain a variety of cards that do things like connect to a computer, provide a user station, or network to another chassis. Since yesterday morning, almost none of the interconnectivity has been working. That’s what I’ve been working on nigh-exclusively since I arrived, then.
I just made some progress. I’ve isolated the problem.
It’s not Chassis 5, and it’s not Chassis 7/16 (a split chassis, thus with two identification numbers). It’s either Chassis 2 or Chassis 1 (which only connects to the rest of the network via #2).
Here’s how I got this far: I discovered that I could make a particular combination of inserted cards come up “green” on Chassis 5 (our main “routing hub” chassis), and that the trick to doing so was to leave out any card that connected in even a roundabout way to Chassis 7/16 (a secondary “routing hub” chassis). “Great, it must be in 7/16,” I thought.
In trying to reproduce this success on 7/16, I discovered that the only way to get reliable results was to leave out the card that connects the 7-side of that 4080 to Chassis 2. So I pulled the two cards in #2 that talk to the rest of the system, and reinserted all of the non-Enco cards in both 7/16 and 5. Voila! I can reliably pull up machines across all of the Server-room side of the Cybex network, and my XPRB (basically my “console unit” card) can display inventory for any connected chassis. At this point we have a mostly-usable system for the first time in a couple of days.
So now it’s just Chassis 1 and 2 that are isolated, and I need to figure out how to proceed from here… since isolating the problem doesn’t explain the problem itself.
Hoo boy. At least I can say I did something valuable with my time today, eh?
