TechProsaic

(Now playing on the iPod: Korn - Dirty)

I now have Flyspray installed on my site to track the things I wish to do, both on halr9000.com, and on the Brindy’s Giftables website, which I manage. Flyspray is a bug tracking system written by Tony Collins, a good friend of mine in Australia. It’s written in PHP and uses a database back-end (mySQL or others). You should check it out. It’s under active development, so if you have a feature you’d like to see, head over to his site and join the mailing list.

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Friday: looked for cars for 4 hours

Saturday: looked for cars for 6 hours, then went to chili cookoff. I wanted to be a judge, so my chili wasn’t voted on. But it did receive compliments from the other judges. There were a couple of nasty ones, a few really good ones (including mine), and several generic chilis.

Sunday: decided on car, bought kid gift, went to kid birthday party (Keith’s son Zachary). Went straight to dealership to do paperwork.

After much deliberation we decided to go for the Honda Odyssey. The Pilot (SUV), Toyota Sienna (van) and Kia Sedona (van) were also in the running. The Kia was nice in that its cheap, and comprable to the the Windstar features-wise, plus the 100k/10yr warranty. Oh we also looked at the Nissan Quest and…another Nissan I forget the model. The 04 Quest is umm…odd looking. It reminds me of old predictions of the future, like those old cartoons “Cars of the Future” etc.

The Pilot was pretty cool, but we decided for the money ($32k) you don’t get as much car as the other contenders. As far as vans go, the Sienna is the best. Unfortunately it costs the most. Toyota would not deal at all, the price given was the sticker price. We’d actually decided we wanted it though, and held our breath while they evaluated the Windstar for trade. They came back with $6500. We paid $22k for it in 2001 (1 yr old at the time). Edmunds says a 00 Windstar in “rough” condition should wholesale $7500-8500, we were hoping to be a little above that. Toyota went up to $7000 after much gnashing of teeth. And that’s still losing a crapload on the loan. POS Ford.

That pretty much broke the deal, we don’t have enough cash to make it work. So we regrouped and were gonna hit some other Toyota dealers up, and/or put $1000 in repairs on the van and sell it privately. Then I went and looked up resale prices on an 02 Odessey. There was one with 85k miles that was going for $21k. That made up our mind to get the Honda.

Went back to the Honda dealership. They would move on their price, and once we were happy with the deal, we had them check out the Windstar. They offered $8800 and we bit. (Did I mention it needs an O2 sensor, new water pump, and there is transmission fluid on the bottom of the pan?) Staci and I made under-the-desk high-fives.

The paperwork is 90% done. The one we chose was fresh off the truck and hasn’t been “unwrapped” yet, and is missing a lot of fuses and stuff like that. Picking it up tonight.

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My wife’s Windstar is dying. It’s a 2000 with 68k miles on it, yet in the past 6 months, we’ve put out about $3500 in mainteance. Most of that was a new transmission. A new transmission at 60k is not supposed to happen. But that by itself doesn’t swear me off against Fords. That was the icing on the cake though. Previous to the Windstar, we had an Explorer. It was loaded and we liked it (ok she liked it, I found it uncomfortable). Anyway, IT also, had a bad transmission. And then, 3000 milies after the warranty on that transmission expired–it needed another. So we got rid of it and for some reason got another Ford.

First the transmission went. Then each month since then we’ve spent about $400 in work. Now it needs a new O2 sensor and water pump. There was some other stuff in there too. I’m tired of it!!

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Friday: ate some Mexican takeout, played some Enemy Territory with Jamie for way too long. Had trouble getting to sleep, then I got paged early early Saturday morning.

Saturday: Spent about 7 hours at my mom’s farm and had a blast. This was the first annual Corn Grinding and Apple Squeezing event at the Porter farm. This isn’t the first time they’ve done the food processing, they usually do that once or more a year out at Air Acres. This year, they took the setup to the house. To be specific, they took it to the pasture.

Here’s how it worked: The corn grinding is performed via a grinder that is belt-driven off of an old tractor setup just for the event. The corn was turned into meal that was used to make fresh cornbread for lunch. It was awesome. There’s also an apple juicing machine and this thing has a large crank-powered cog with bunches of teeth that eat apples to make pulp. That falls into a barrel with a cloth to filter the solid bits. When the barrel is full, you lower the press and tighten it till done. It’s really easy, and very rustic. The juice is good too.

But that wasn’t the whole point of Saturday’s party. There were the Beano Air Races (don’t ask me what Beano means), which consisted of at least 10 different RC airplanes flown around a circuit set off by 20-foot pylons. The circuit was what, 50 yards wide? Not sure about that. My brother has a new plan he “flew”. Note the quotes. Most of the time his plane was stuck in a tree. He needs to work on that. The races were pretty informal though. Lots of testing and free-flight was done in addition to the several circuit races. Everybody loved watching that.

There were games for the kids and games for the adults and food for everyone. here are some pictures taken by Jay.

Sunday: Spent a lot of the day indoors tweaking the Brindy’s Giftables website and otherwise goofing off. Staci’s mom bought us dinner at IHOP to celebrate Staci’s birthday. When I got home I started on the countertop project. It’s done, the corian is cut. It wasn’t a huge deal, but the proper prepwork took some time. I actually did a better job cutting it than the person who did it originally. It was free though.

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Read this Letter from Steve Linford with the Spamhaus organization, it’s classic. Here is an excellent /. posting with lots of background links.

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This is my movie review for School of Rock, starring Jack Black.

First, let me say I’m not a huge Jack Black fan. I think he’s funny, great character, and his band Tenacious D has some funny and memorable songs (f*ck her gently is great if you can get over how crude it is), but the music is overall, not that great. My thing about his acting is that he’s too over the top when over the top doesn’t fit. However, I respect his band because they make their live shows available for free on etree.org. (Check out this list of all the bands on etree, your favorites might be there.)

Anyway, back to the movie. The concept has been done many times, most of them with Whoopi. You put a non-conforming person in a situation where conformity is expected, add music. Long story short, Whoopi’s first try was better than Jack’s. The first 10 min of the movie, and the last 15, were actually pretty funny and I enjoyed watching. Unfortunately, the movie ran for 108 minutes. My wife and I were checking our watches a couple of times during the film. It felt REALLY LONG for a movie with a bunch of kids in it. Joan Cusack was her usual slightly odd self, whom I like usually. Jack’s buddy Ned was really kinda sad. I don’t even want to give him a hyperlink here, folks. Let’s just say he played his role perfectly. Those who have seen the movie will understand what I mean by that. Some of the children actors did a pretty good job, and I commend them.

Overall the movie was lackluster and as good as the climax was, it wasn’t enough to pull the whole movie off of the ground. Might be a good movie to rent for some teenaged kids. (Note there is a tiny bit of cursing, but not a lot.)

I give it a 4 out of 10.

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No, its not a new movie by any means, and I saw it on a crappy loaned VHS tape, but I am glad I finally watched it. Dragonfly, with Kevin Costner, was a damn fine piece of work. It’s billed as a sci-fi paranatural thriller; much discussion of near-death-experiences and life after death. The movie was creepy in all the right subtle ways that a good thriller should be. I give it an 8 out of 10.

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Man, I could watch this one again and again. It’s what, three weeks old now? I keep going back over to Homestarrunner view it.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail84.html

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Microsoft Wins Browser War, Abandons “Innovation”

Check out my Slashdot comment where I describe what happened to me in the war for web standards against Microsoft.

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My mom is having a big fall party out at her farm in a couple of weeks. She has requested that someone come up with a pumpkin catapult for the festivities. I’m seriously thinking of building one, but have not decided if I really want to spend the money and effort on doing so. In the meantime, I’m open to ideas and suggestions! I haven’t looked at ANYTHING online yet, but one friend send this link:

http://www.trebuchet.com

We shall see…

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