My 2¢

So last night I had to replace the power supply in my storage server. It just up and died, but fortunately, didn’t take anything else with it. I really like those power supplies that have the plugs on the back where you can connect specialized cables for only those devices you have. It eliminates lots of extra dangling wires dangling inside the case. No data was lost, and the web server, which was waiting patiently for the storage server to come back up, reconnected with the iSCSI target as soon as it was up.

And You Thought Oil Companies Were Gouging Consumers

We received a sympathy card from our veterinarian in the mail yesterday. It was signed by the staff. I thought it was a nice gesture. Kelsey’s ashes are ready to be picked up. I was looking through a brochure for a nicer urn than the standard wood box that you get and found a nice marble one. I called to find out the price and was shocked to learn that this little marble box cost $233US! A small engraved brass plate was $40US, and a small, round, plastic photo frame is $23! I was told that the urn was made of Italian marble. That has to be why it’s so expensive. Yeah…that’s it. Surely, they’re not trying to take advantage of people grieving over the loss of their pets. We’re going with the standard wood box, and we’ll get an engraved brass plate from Things Remembered for probably $10 and a photo frame from WalMart for about two bucks.

I picked up a Dell 24″ widescreen flatpanel display this week for my Linux multimedia system. It is truly a thing of beauty.

Exactly *when* did not returning calls become an accepted business practice?

So what else is there to rant about today? I could go on about the ridiculous way that gas prices are rising, but that’s been overdone lately. It’s not like it’s not a worthy target for a rant, but everybody has been doing it lately.

I’ve been trying for a month now to contact a contractor who can turn our gravel driveway into an attractive concrete driveway. Only one of them actually answered their phone…the others just go to voicemail. I’ve never received a callback from one of them, despite having left voicemail three times. One of the ones who did call back wanted to come by the house on a day when I was out of town. I asked him if he could drop by the following Friday and he said he’d call me back. He never did. The other one who did call back took my information about what I was wanting and said he might go by my house that evening and take a look. Never heard from that one again either.

Now, I realize that these guys are probably busy…it is summer, after all, and probably the peak of their season…but is that any excuse for not returning phone calls? How hard is it to call back and say “Sorry, we’re booked through the end of summer and could you try again in about a month or so?” Is their business so good that they don’t have to worry about pissing people off and losing potential customers? Well, I really want to get my driveway done, so I’m going to keep calling until someone calls me back.

I hadn’t been working too much on the landscape lighting project since sometime in mid-April. We needed to put up a storage shed in the back yard to store stuff from the basement so that we can convert a large part of the basement into a family room. As the shed nears completion, I’ve been working on the landscape lighting project again. I was hoping to have it up and running by this summer, but I think I’m going to miss that deadline. There’s still more coding on the controller that needs done, and there’s still some hardware/enclosure issues to bang out.

As for the controller, I need to add a few more of the lighting effects and implement the timers. I’ve been concentrating on the timers for about a week now. I’ve decided that there will be 5 timers, and each timer can be either:

• Daily - timer comes on and goes off at the same time every day
• Weekly - the timer comes on and goes off at the same time on specified days of the week
• Calendar - the timer comes on at a specific time on a specific day and goes off at a specified time

The hardware that remains is creating the connection points. A single 4 conductor cable will run from the lighting controller. The cable will then feed what I’m calling a connection point. It’s a little box with screw terminals (on the inside) where up to four of the lighting fixtures can attach. It will also contain some active circuitry to act as an RS-485 repeater to the next connection point, and so on. I’ve got a prototype of a connection point working, and I’m working on designing the PCB. What I’m still trying to figure out is the best way to house and weatherproof the whole thing. Not only will the lid have to seal, but the points on the box where the cables enter will also have to be weatherproof. I’ll probably end up using some type of silicone caulk to plug up the cable holes.

Ok, so I’ve had this software installed for what, 5 months now. I guess it’s time to start using it. Lots of significant (to me) things have been happening this year, and I feel compelled to write about them. Please excuse the style and design of the blog — yes, it is the default WordPress template. I’m no graphic designer. I may take a stab at changing it at some point in the future, when I’m sufficiently motivated — but not now. I have a list of things nearly (it seems) a mile long, and updating my blog theme has been shoved down toward the bottom just past “pulling the weeds”. Heck, I can’t even think of a better name than “No title given”

So, as I mentioned, lots of significant things have been happening this year. It’s been one of my worst years in my nearly 42 years on this Earth. It started off before I’d even become accustomed to dating my checks for 2006 with the sudden, unexpected passing of my father in late January. He was 66. It was either a heart attack or a stroke. There was no autopsy, so we don’t know for sure. My mother was killed in an auto accident in 1983, so the passing of my father meant that I was now the senior member of our part of the family tree.

More recently (last Wednesday night to be exact), one of our two cats died in the animal hospital. It was like losing a best friend I had known for 13 years, and I took it pretty hard. She had been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism about 2.5 months earlier, but we had that under control. We even thought that at one point, she might have even had chronic renal failure, but that wasn’t what took her. She had developed a condition where her own immune system was causing the destruction of her red blood cells. She became anemic very rapidly. We admitted her to the animal hospital for a transfusion and to start a treatment to stop her immune system from destroying her red blood cells, but we didn’t catch it soon enough. The Vet called later that evening to inform me that even though she received the transfusion, she didn’t make it.

If you’re a lover of irony (or coincidence, perhaps), Kelsey died 6 months to the day after my dad. She loved to curl up on our laps, so I like to think that she’s curled up on my dad’s lap waiting for when I can be with them again. Rest in peace, Dad. Rest in peace, Kelsey.