Beware of Leopard ⁽²⁵⁵⁾

Brian Bilbrey February 14, 2012

New Heat

The old furnace was a wee bit crufty, and I really don't like supplemental condensate pumps - they're prone to failure, which makes a basement prone to water damage. But worst, we had a corroded burner in the old Janitrol, and not a replacement to be found - they don't make them anymore. Now, thanks to A. P. Mathews, we have something new to heat the basement: The new Trane – well, for starters it’s 21 years younger. It’s more fuel efficient, and moves more air, too. Two other big wins. We got rid of the condensate pump, and are…

Brian Bilbrey February 12, 2012

One

One ... One free minute would be nice. Yesterday, I sat for my take-home midterm in Geology. It took me 5 hours. I pity the folks who read slowly and are tortured when it comes to writing. After that, I gave several hours to working on the front matter for an SRS (System Requirements Specification) document due this weekend for my Software Engineering class. I had one bum system last night that needed (remote) rebooting and hand holding for about an hour. There were several Linux systems updates last night and this morning, followed by reboot and testing. I did…

Brian Bilbrey January 13, 2012

JoCo Artificial Heart Package

Among the contents therein is the signed CD, which I most incautiously tore whilst attempting a manual decoupling of the liner notes from the case. Sigh. So I used an obtrusive and intimately personal repair method: thin strips of electrical tape. They seem most appropriate, given the title and image of the album. The good news is that it also arrived in Vinyl!

Brian Bilbrey January 1, 2012

Welcome to 2012.

Things that might happen this year: Two of those are, I think, likely. Observe that I make no REALLY absurd claims about food or exercise. That'd just be crazytalk. I do note that the loonier portions of Iraq are claiming a victory over the US because we finally withdrew the last of our combat troops from that cesspit of a made-up country. We had one primary goal - dispose of Saddam. Done. We had a secondary goal, which is to leave that country in a fairly stable sovereign condition. Silly secondary goal: expensive in blood and treasure, and pointless since…

Brian Bilbrey December 28, 2011

Linux remodel, OpenIndiana build 151a, Node.js, and the DTrace Book

Lots of computing updates going on. It all started last week ... * * * It was the Thursday before Christmas, or Wednesday perhaps, the details blur just a bit. I've not been using the Linux box formerly known as Slartibartfast as a desktop machine for quite a while now. My old MacBook Pro got refurbished with a small-ish SSD drive, and that's the primary desktop system these days. It sits in a custom upright support that I created for the purpose a couple of years ago, and finally put to use Darlion — the OS X Lion -enabled former…