![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Visible progress...
on a number of fronts, all of them pretty mundane, only two worth mentioning.
The more visually pleasing is the removal of the stuff that had accumulated on the "ledges" of my bookcases (you know, those narrow strips of shelf real estate that remain after the books are in). Sometimes, these ledges are only wide enough to handle a CD or cassette or two sideways; in other cases, they are wide enough to accommodate a second "layer" of books. On the average, they will accommodate a pile of paperbacks, stacked sideways, in such a way that the center of gravity is just inside the shelf edge. This makes the pile looks stable, but just let a fly light on the outboard side of the stack and...well...it's all over (as in: the floor). In any event, all of that stuff is gone, distributed to proper places, and I've even eliminated most of the other miscellany that lived in the space above the books and under the shelf above.
The tools in the garage got a good rummage, as well. Now, at least, I have a better idea of where things are, to within a foot or so, instead of that uneasy feeling that accompanies the knowledge that the long Phillips-head screwdriver is somewhere in the garage. Galina helped out, and was rewarded by the discovery of a perfectly serviceable piece of luggage for her trip. Between the two of us, the free volume in the garage is beginning to expand noticeably every time we devote a couple of hours to the task.
In the course of my rummage, I ran across an old outdoor/indoor electronic thermometer, sans the outdoor probe, which had been chewed off by one of our animals a long time ago. It so happens I found the probe a while back and stored it, in my packrat fashion, in one of the multicompartmented plastic boxes I bought when we moved into this house. So...I rewired the probe, added a battery, and voilà, another small piece of technology resurrected. Now I can tell you not only that it is hot outside right now, but also how hot (94.1 deg F).
In checking the Windows box periodically during the day, I recalled I reinstalled the SETI@Home software on my C drive, whereas the previous install lived on D. A quick look showed that some of the files from the previous incarnation remain, and one of them in particular told me that the e-mail address I'd used way back when to register with SET@Home wasn't the one I've been using lately. (This leads me to believe my one SET@Home user name has two e-mail addresses associated with it. Go figure.) Checking the status of the "other" account showed my accumulated 5 units completed to date, which places my efforts just above the 50-th percentile of participants. That sounds pretty pathetic, although the overall stats as shown on their web site are pretty impressive. No E.T. yet, though.
The Windows box continues to defy the odds, with an uptime of almost 38 hours, almost 14 of which have been spent crunching numbers for SETI@Home. Ultimately, there is no way to guarantee that the machine will never crash or hang - I mean, after all, it is running Windows
- but if it manages to complete an entire SETI data packet without dumping bits all over the carpet, I'll consider the problem solved...and will start to think seriously about cranking the CPU clock speed back up to what a 333-MHz chip oughta be able to handle.
Cheers...
The more visually pleasing is the removal of the stuff that had accumulated on the "ledges" of my bookcases (you know, those narrow strips of shelf real estate that remain after the books are in). Sometimes, these ledges are only wide enough to handle a CD or cassette or two sideways; in other cases, they are wide enough to accommodate a second "layer" of books. On the average, they will accommodate a pile of paperbacks, stacked sideways, in such a way that the center of gravity is just inside the shelf edge. This makes the pile looks stable, but just let a fly light on the outboard side of the stack and...well...it's all over (as in: the floor). In any event, all of that stuff is gone, distributed to proper places, and I've even eliminated most of the other miscellany that lived in the space above the books and under the shelf above.
The tools in the garage got a good rummage, as well. Now, at least, I have a better idea of where things are, to within a foot or so, instead of that uneasy feeling that accompanies the knowledge that the long Phillips-head screwdriver is somewhere in the garage. Galina helped out, and was rewarded by the discovery of a perfectly serviceable piece of luggage for her trip. Between the two of us, the free volume in the garage is beginning to expand noticeably every time we devote a couple of hours to the task.
In the course of my rummage, I ran across an old outdoor/indoor electronic thermometer, sans the outdoor probe, which had been chewed off by one of our animals a long time ago. It so happens I found the probe a while back and stored it, in my packrat fashion, in one of the multicompartmented plastic boxes I bought when we moved into this house. So...I rewired the probe, added a battery, and voilà, another small piece of technology resurrected. Now I can tell you not only that it is hot outside right now, but also how hot (94.1 deg F).
In checking the Windows box periodically during the day, I recalled I reinstalled the SETI@Home software on my C drive, whereas the previous install lived on D. A quick look showed that some of the files from the previous incarnation remain, and one of them in particular told me that the e-mail address I'd used way back when to register with SET@Home wasn't the one I've been using lately. (This leads me to believe my one SET@Home user name has two e-mail addresses associated with it. Go figure.) Checking the status of the "other" account showed my accumulated 5 units completed to date, which places my efforts just above the 50-th percentile of participants. That sounds pretty pathetic, although the overall stats as shown on their web site are pretty impressive. No E.T. yet, though.
The Windows box continues to defy the odds, with an uptime of almost 38 hours, almost 14 of which have been spent crunching numbers for SETI@Home. Ultimately, there is no way to guarantee that the machine will never crash or hang - I mean, after all, it is running Windows
- but if it manages to complete an entire SETI data packet without dumping bits all over the carpet, I'll consider the problem solved...and will start to think seriously about cranking the CPU clock speed back up to what a 333-MHz chip oughta be able to handle.Cheers...