Change is the only constant...
03:54 AM 11/08/2011
So once again our intrepid poster is awake at an early hour. Both good and bad. Good because I won't oversleep for the interview that I have today. Bad because I didn't get enough sleep for the interview I have today.
Did I mention I have an interview today?
Actually it's a three-person interview at a datacenter for a Help Desk position. Hopefully it goes well but that depends a lot on me. I know I meet their typing requirements of 35 wpm minimum since they had me do a quick typing test online. (I tested at 50wpm but that was with the laptop balanced on the corner of the couch so I know I can do better.)
So reading The Register and they had this doozy of an article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/07/yu55_is_comng/
It's about a aircraft carrier sized black spherical object headed towards Earth. Now strangely this is not the first time I've heard about this kind of thing. Way back in the 80's and 90's I recall seeing some small news blurb about a "dark body" headed towards Earth but then it was as if all the news stories vanished into thin air. I chalked it up to bad astronomy and filed it under conspiracy theories run amuck. But now here it is again. So I have to wonder if this is the same object or not.
A tiny idle part of my brain is wondering if this will be in our area December 2012. ;-)
Another part of me that just watched Captain Harlock is wondering if it's a Mazone "pennant" sent to claim the planet as their second home. Yes...I'm weird...but then if you've read my babblings for any length of time you already knew that. ^_^
Didn't get much done in the workshop yesterday. Ran out of drive space while rendering video. Fortunately I think I have a drive around here that will give me enough working space and is in a Firewire case so it'll be fast enough. It's interesting to note that the first computer plugged back in after the start of the shuffling out there is my 17" G5 iMac. (Which needs RAM dammit. *sigh* It's always something money related of late.) That said I need to get all those on battery backups so that they aren't affected by power fluctuations. The iMac in particular reacts if it's off because it's set to boot on power-on. That means if the power dips enough and comes back up the iMac wakes back up. This often happens when the space heater kicks in out there. So if I don't do something I'll keep finding my iMac, among other things, running when I go out to the workshop.
Anyways I'm hoping I have enough time after the interview today to shuffle more stuff around out there. The boat motor stand can go in the basement for now as that's where the boat motors are. That should give me enough space to take apart the one workbech so it can be remade into shelves. I didn't originally want to take it apart but I have to just because there's not enough room with it in there. Once that's done then the air compressor and the workbench made of 2x4s can be moved over to that side. That will allow me to get the one desk into place and move my grandmother's couch where it aught to be.
I also need to re-arrange the full computer rack so that most of the servers in the basement can go in it. Lesser projects include re-assembling my PDP-11/04 so that it can go in the aforementioned rack as well as re-assembling the MicroVAX II so I can fire it up later this year after re-arranging the boards and putting a SCSI drive in it. (No drive for the PDP-11/04 as of yet. I'm hoping someday to be able to afford a UNIBUS unobtanium SCSI controller but that again depends on money.) I'm also going to try and fire up the MicroVAX 3400 just to see what's on it. But that's after all the organizing is done.
I think I'll bw listing a number of things on Freecycle. Perhaps even my old stereo that I haven't turned on in years. I don't know. If I can find a space for it I may use it as a simple amplifier unit. Lots of stuff I have can either go or be put into boxes until I can deal with it. A friend is giving me a partial roll of construction plastic that is going to end up in the crawlspace to replace the dead plastic that's there now. For now I'm just going to cover it over and stake it down with something like the metal tent stakes. That'll help keep it in place and allow me to put sealed boxes down there without serious moisture issues.
The basement is one place where when we get our house paid off I'm going to give some serious attention to. It will be expensive but digging all that out and pouring a slab and footer extansions will literally double the space of the house. (I might even be able to put a pool table down there someday...)
The recently colder weather has reminded me that I need to find that bug in Luffy's software causing the improper temp read when below zero and the lack of wind direction. Not sure I'm up to that task right now. Maybe I need to write more code first so I'm comfortable with C. Still have that goofy little Ultima clone I started on that I need to get back to. (The next step on that is working to draw the map window and moving the avatar around in the map.)
I swear that I need about fourteen bodies to control so I can do everything I want darnit. Bring on the clones! *grin*
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth ( http://nimitzbrood.dreamwidth.org/248039.html ) but feel free to comment here as well.
So once again our intrepid poster is awake at an early hour. Both good and bad. Good because I won't oversleep for the interview that I have today. Bad because I didn't get enough sleep for the interview I have today.
Did I mention I have an interview today?
Actually it's a three-person interview at a datacenter for a Help Desk position. Hopefully it goes well but that depends a lot on me. I know I meet their typing requirements of 35 wpm minimum since they had me do a quick typing test online. (I tested at 50wpm but that was with the laptop balanced on the corner of the couch so I know I can do better.)
So reading The Register and they had this doozy of an article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/07/yu55_is_comng/
It's about a aircraft carrier sized black spherical object headed towards Earth. Now strangely this is not the first time I've heard about this kind of thing. Way back in the 80's and 90's I recall seeing some small news blurb about a "dark body" headed towards Earth but then it was as if all the news stories vanished into thin air. I chalked it up to bad astronomy and filed it under conspiracy theories run amuck. But now here it is again. So I have to wonder if this is the same object or not.
A tiny idle part of my brain is wondering if this will be in our area December 2012. ;-)
Another part of me that just watched Captain Harlock is wondering if it's a Mazone "pennant" sent to claim the planet as their second home. Yes...I'm weird...but then if you've read my babblings for any length of time you already knew that. ^_^
Didn't get much done in the workshop yesterday. Ran out of drive space while rendering video. Fortunately I think I have a drive around here that will give me enough working space and is in a Firewire case so it'll be fast enough. It's interesting to note that the first computer plugged back in after the start of the shuffling out there is my 17" G5 iMac. (Which needs RAM dammit. *sigh* It's always something money related of late.) That said I need to get all those on battery backups so that they aren't affected by power fluctuations. The iMac in particular reacts if it's off because it's set to boot on power-on. That means if the power dips enough and comes back up the iMac wakes back up. This often happens when the space heater kicks in out there. So if I don't do something I'll keep finding my iMac, among other things, running when I go out to the workshop.
Anyways I'm hoping I have enough time after the interview today to shuffle more stuff around out there. The boat motor stand can go in the basement for now as that's where the boat motors are. That should give me enough space to take apart the one workbech so it can be remade into shelves. I didn't originally want to take it apart but I have to just because there's not enough room with it in there. Once that's done then the air compressor and the workbench made of 2x4s can be moved over to that side. That will allow me to get the one desk into place and move my grandmother's couch where it aught to be.
I also need to re-arrange the full computer rack so that most of the servers in the basement can go in it. Lesser projects include re-assembling my PDP-11/04 so that it can go in the aforementioned rack as well as re-assembling the MicroVAX II so I can fire it up later this year after re-arranging the boards and putting a SCSI drive in it. (No drive for the PDP-11/04 as of yet. I'm hoping someday to be able to afford a UNIBUS unobtanium SCSI controller but that again depends on money.) I'm also going to try and fire up the MicroVAX 3400 just to see what's on it. But that's after all the organizing is done.
I think I'll bw listing a number of things on Freecycle. Perhaps even my old stereo that I haven't turned on in years. I don't know. If I can find a space for it I may use it as a simple amplifier unit. Lots of stuff I have can either go or be put into boxes until I can deal with it. A friend is giving me a partial roll of construction plastic that is going to end up in the crawlspace to replace the dead plastic that's there now. For now I'm just going to cover it over and stake it down with something like the metal tent stakes. That'll help keep it in place and allow me to put sealed boxes down there without serious moisture issues.
The basement is one place where when we get our house paid off I'm going to give some serious attention to. It will be expensive but digging all that out and pouring a slab and footer extansions will literally double the space of the house. (I might even be able to put a pool table down there someday...)
The recently colder weather has reminded me that I need to find that bug in Luffy's software causing the improper temp read when below zero and the lack of wind direction. Not sure I'm up to that task right now. Maybe I need to write more code first so I'm comfortable with C. Still have that goofy little Ultima clone I started on that I need to get back to. (The next step on that is working to draw the map window and moving the avatar around in the map.)
I swear that I need about fourteen bodies to control so I can do everything I want darnit. Bring on the clones! *grin*
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth ( http://nimitzbrood.dreamwidth.org/248039.html ) but feel free to comment here as well.