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Good weekend...all things considered.
Apr. 8th, 2001 11:23 pmIt was a slow day at the store yesterday, and the kids encouraged me to take time off (Drew suggested I take the day off, but I had to open the store, and then one thing led to another...but I did take time off.)
After work, I went over to Feht's for the first time since he and his wife returned from their Guadelupe vacation. Maria's father is visiting from Novosibirsk. He's something of a tall, thin gent with a baritone voice and a photographer's eye (we've sold three of his photographs in the store over the past couple of months), and we had a pleasant dinner.
Afterward, we sat down to watch Gattaca on Feht's home theater setup. I was really impressed with the movie, and its premise - that advances in our understanding of genetics will result in the creation of an underclass of people irrevocably deemed genetically "inferior" and treated accordingly - seems to be getting closer every day. Perhaps Orwell was wrong, it's not our Big Brother we need to worry about, it's our own DNA that will betray us. I liked the way the theme of nurture overcoming nature was developed, too, and not only in how the "in-valid" Vincent overcomes the obstacles placed in his path, but also how his alter ego, Jerome, behaves despite his genetically near-perfect life.
I stopped the car somewhere along the 11-mile stretch of Cat Creek Road between Feht's house and 160, shut off the motor and got out to look at the full moon. It was a pretty sight, and it was about as quiet a moment as I can get.
The local paper, the Sun, tells us that in 1999, the transportation department logged an average of 13,700 vehicles driving through town daily on the main drag, Highway 160. That must account for the nearly constant traffic noise I hear on the veranda at home, for even though the house is more than a mile away from the highway, we're up high enough for the sound to reach us.
I got an early start to the day today by going downstairs and cleaning the "office." I got rid of a bunch of extraneous stuff (such as a red plush chair) and also cleaned out the "mud" room, which is right next to my office. Afterward, I unpacked a bunch of boxes and placed their contents on the shelves in the mud room, and then undertook to troubleshoot a networking problem on Lee's machine.
The problem is particularly acute, since I want to back up a number of data files onto CD from various machines, and the best way to do that is to bring the files to back up onto Lee's machine (the Iomega CD-RW connects through a USB port, and Lee's machine is the only one around here - except for my Sony - that has such a port). It's really maddening, too, since other machines on the network can ping Lee's box and Lee's box can ping right back, but any attempt to view the Network Neighborhood ends in faillure and a message to the effect of "you can't view the network because there's a problem."
Plan B was to back things up on the older CD-R unit on my old homebrew box, but that took some time, as that unit is more finicky about what kind of disks you put into it (it seems to not like the newer, 700 MB disks). By the end of the day, I'd backed up most of Drew's data and managed to move some files to my Linux box for some down-home massaging using some quick-and-dirty Perl scripts.
Galina is still in Houston. Having nothing to do on Saturday, she wandered on by the dealership where we bought our Toyota and now she is seriously involved in dealing our way into a van-type vehicle. I support the idea, as the Camry has no real space to speak of to haul anything other than four people and a couple of bags of laundry, it seems. I just hope she gets everthing ironed out in time to get here by Thursday, which is when Drew and Shannon take off for two weeks to visit her folks in California.
Plenty of time to worry about that later. For now...it's time to hit the rack. Another week starts tomorrow...and it's going to be a big one!
Cheers...
After work, I went over to Feht's for the first time since he and his wife returned from their Guadelupe vacation. Maria's father is visiting from Novosibirsk. He's something of a tall, thin gent with a baritone voice and a photographer's eye (we've sold three of his photographs in the store over the past couple of months), and we had a pleasant dinner.
Afterward, we sat down to watch Gattaca on Feht's home theater setup. I was really impressed with the movie, and its premise - that advances in our understanding of genetics will result in the creation of an underclass of people irrevocably deemed genetically "inferior" and treated accordingly - seems to be getting closer every day. Perhaps Orwell was wrong, it's not our Big Brother we need to worry about, it's our own DNA that will betray us. I liked the way the theme of nurture overcoming nature was developed, too, and not only in how the "in-valid" Vincent overcomes the obstacles placed in his path, but also how his alter ego, Jerome, behaves despite his genetically near-perfect life.
I stopped the car somewhere along the 11-mile stretch of Cat Creek Road between Feht's house and 160, shut off the motor and got out to look at the full moon. It was a pretty sight, and it was about as quiet a moment as I can get.
The local paper, the Sun, tells us that in 1999, the transportation department logged an average of 13,700 vehicles driving through town daily on the main drag, Highway 160. That must account for the nearly constant traffic noise I hear on the veranda at home, for even though the house is more than a mile away from the highway, we're up high enough for the sound to reach us.
I got an early start to the day today by going downstairs and cleaning the "office." I got rid of a bunch of extraneous stuff (such as a red plush chair) and also cleaned out the "mud" room, which is right next to my office. Afterward, I unpacked a bunch of boxes and placed their contents on the shelves in the mud room, and then undertook to troubleshoot a networking problem on Lee's machine.
The problem is particularly acute, since I want to back up a number of data files onto CD from various machines, and the best way to do that is to bring the files to back up onto Lee's machine (the Iomega CD-RW connects through a USB port, and Lee's machine is the only one around here - except for my Sony - that has such a port). It's really maddening, too, since other machines on the network can ping Lee's box and Lee's box can ping right back, but any attempt to view the Network Neighborhood ends in faillure and a message to the effect of "you can't view the network because there's a problem."
Plan B was to back things up on the older CD-R unit on my old homebrew box, but that took some time, as that unit is more finicky about what kind of disks you put into it (it seems to not like the newer, 700 MB disks). By the end of the day, I'd backed up most of Drew's data and managed to move some files to my Linux box for some down-home massaging using some quick-and-dirty Perl scripts.
Galina is still in Houston. Having nothing to do on Saturday, she wandered on by the dealership where we bought our Toyota and now she is seriously involved in dealing our way into a van-type vehicle. I support the idea, as the Camry has no real space to speak of to haul anything other than four people and a couple of bags of laundry, it seems. I just hope she gets everthing ironed out in time to get here by Thursday, which is when Drew and Shannon take off for two weeks to visit her folks in California.
Plenty of time to worry about that later. For now...it's time to hit the rack. Another week starts tomorrow...and it's going to be a big one!
Cheers...
