Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

So close to bed, just a few things to update before crawling into bed.
Tonight I finished all 547 pages of The Singing Sword. It the second book in the Camulod Series by Jack Whyte about the era before the time of Arthur at the end of the Roman Empire in Britain. I am really enjoying the books, they are a great mix of history and legend with interesting characters. As I read through the denouement tonight, my heart raced as I read through the action. There are five more books in the series and I need to take a break. My nightstand has several other books waiting for my attention.
Eye news:
My mother called me today with news of a ‘medical miracle’. She had seen a story on Oprah about a woman with keratoconus that could see with scleral lenses. Bless my mom, she thought she had found the magic cure for my eye problems. I explained that I knew about scleral lenses, and that they really weren’t for me. She’s always on the alert…
Weblog news:
My brother Matt is back in action after brief technical trouble.

I was in a meeting at the office and we were discussing a bunch of changes to the computers we are going to make. I had a list of issues we were discussing and most of them seemed fairly reasonable.
When we got to discuss ‘The Links Bar’ the room got quiet. First, they looked at me like I was from Mars. I said, “You know, the Links Bar!” Then everyone looked at me with a sad face.
Before going forward here’s what the Links Bar looks like:

The Links Bar is kind of like a displayed set of Favorites/Bookmarks that resides in your toolbars so that you don’t have to pull down a menu to get to your frequently hit pages. It’s called the Links Bar in Internet Explorer, but the feature exists in most modern browsers.
Back to the story…
I began asking why the Links Bar was locked and hidden away. They all gave me a look that said, “You poor out of date man. What are you going to ask for next, a fax machine?” I said, “Am I the only one that uses the Links Bar?” They all nodded. I simply couldn’t believe this. I find the Links Bar invaluable. “Really, none of you use it?” I looked around the room and the eight other people all looked at me, shaking their heads.
Unable to wrap my head around this I asked how they got to their bookmarks. “Umm, we use the pull down…” Much head nodding.
They tried to be nice and humor me. They offered to unlock the Links Bar and put whatever bookmarks I wanted there. But the damage was done. I was the weird one, using the quirky feature noone else values.
The next time I am about to jab my Mom or Dad about the strange things they do on their computer that seem silly to me (electronic post-it notes and an upside-down touchpad instead of a mouse), I will remember this and cut them some slack.
Does anyone else use the Links Bar?

I posted to this weblog when I was at the last SoCal Wireless User Group meeting. My play by play updates generated little interest or comments. While I was there, I talked to a reporter there about my cantenna and he wrote up a brief story for the LA Times.
No wires to get syrup on
Here’s the scanned story:

The reporter added 10 years to my age, I’m only 35!
Michele was quite impressed with my fame. For about five minutes… They she demanded I fix the ‘drip drip sound’ in the toilet. Five minutes from wireless technology god to plumber.

And some people wonder why we travel into space with all the risk involved.
y6y6y6 a poster in a Metafilter thread explained it clearly. I quote:
“Why do we even bother?”
Think about where we were as a species 300 years ago. As humans we explore. 300 years from now we will look back from space and think that asking such a question was quite simpleminded.
I’m sure 300 years ago people said the same thing about explorers and heros setting off in ships.
I’m sure 3000 years ago people asked the same question about families heading off across the tundra.
I’m hopeful that there will always be people who are willing to explore. And I’m thankful that there will always be governments to fund them.
How could we not bother? How could we sit in our couches and say, “That’s it. That’s enough. We will explore no more.”
You nailed it y6y6y6. Thank you.

You all know the news that the Shuttle Columbia has been lost. An amazing record of the landing is here.
I was sitting down at the table to drink my coffee and read the paper. The laptop was sitting there and I decided to turn it on. I sipped on my coffee and read the paper. I looked up at the computer and saw these word on the Yahoo front page – Space Shuttle Apparently Disintegrates. I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. I ran to the TV and turned it on. The now famous image of the shuttle falling through the sky with debris falling off was there. I felt the sick feeling in my stomach that I remember from college when the Challenger exploded.
They were all gone. The shuttle was gone.
Michele and I watched the news for a few minutes. Soon enough Zoe walked in the room. She looked at the TV and said,”What’s that?”
I realized that I was going to actually say it. Like many times in life, thoughts, ideas, and realizations run through your mind without you saying them. In my mind, I knew the truth, but in watching the news with Michele, we had not said much other than ‘Oh my god’. Zoe was looking at me expecting an answer. I grasped at how to explain this tradgedy to a 7 year old.
It took a tremoundous amount of will to summon these words, “The space shuttle crashed.” She looked at me, still not comprehending why Mommy & Daddy were sitting in front of the TV with tears their eyes. She ran off to play.
Michele and I watched until we had heard all the news we will hear for the next several days until they sort things out and have some answers. We turned off the TV. I walked up front to check on the girls.
Zoe wanted me to play videogames with her. I told her I was feeling sad and didn’t want to play. She asked why. Why? Again, I had to actually say it. I had to say the truth. “I’m sad because the spaceship crashed” She again asked why, still unable to wrap her mind around what could make her father sad. I swallowed deeply and finally said, “There were people on spaceship. They’re all gone now.”
At this, the tears fell from my eyes. The sadness overwhelmed me. Zoe hugged me and told me that everything would be all right. I pulled it together and got her and Mira playing some games.
I went to go read more news, and then it hit me.
If talking about seven deaths is difficult, how will I explain War to my daughter.

Wow, 20 blurkers forced into the light. Well done folks.
As promised, here is a picture of Michele in the new car.

It’s a been a light week for weblogging and heavy week for work. The company is trying to get it’s shit together, but it’s not easy to turn the wheel of the ship. A few of us try to sneak into the wheelhouse and spin the wheel until someone tells us to stop.
The good thing about work today was that I got to play with the HDTV Tivo. It is quite sweet. The picture loks great adn they are recording the full ATSC data stream, and aren’t compressing it at all. It’s probably a year away from being in stores, but I lust after it already. The picture is quite tasty.
I also had a chance to play with the Series 2 Tivos with the new features. We don’t watch enough TV to justify to have two, but the access from the internet is enticing.
Lastly, I got the door prize at the meeting. It was a Wristlinx wrist FRS/GMRS radio. I tried it out with Zoe a bit but everything was distorted. I think that they could have been too close. I’ll try it again tomorrow outside.
Linkage:
We had the Superbowl party on Sunday and Brad wrote up the story of the broken window.
My wife, Michele appears to have her weblog groove on.
Via Rebecca Blood, here is the crayon stain removal page.

I’ve got an all day meeting on the glories of Media Asset Management. I know, I know, you are all jealous.
Until then, I have something for you, yes, you, the loyal Cruft reader to do.
I check the referrer logs of the site religiously and see that the site gets viewed by many people. Yet, most of you are strangely silent.
A few days ago I read this Geekychick.net post about blurkers. In the post she defines blurkers thusly:
Blurker (BLUR-kur): n. 1. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs. 2. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur.
I fear this describes many of you. Today, your job is to raise your hand and say hello and emerge from blurkerhood.
Click on the Comments link below and post answers to these three questions.
1) What is your name?
2) What is your quest?
3) What is your favorite color?
Special bonus question: What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
I expect plenty of answers when I check the weblog tonight.
Don’t make me post your IP addresses…

Howdy readers. I’ve neglected the weblog for a few days. Real life does tend to take priority. Over the weekend I often thought about things to post, but I didn’t take the time to post.
On Saturday we prepped for the Superbowl party and got to repair the deck step that got broken at the last party. I enjoyed the task of drilling into masonry and using lead anchors to mount the replacement step. Tools = fun.
Michele and I agreed to take a break from throwing parties for bit. Since Christmas Eve, one month, we had thrown 4 parties (Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Zoe’s Birthday, and Superbowl Sunday) and helped run a geocaching picnic. Whew…
Sunday, before the party, Michele told me to go get a haircut. She made the arrangments for me to go to a ‘men’s salon’ in the nearby Paseo mall. Whatever. I walk in and say, “I’m Mike and I’m here for my haircut”. The lady greets me and hands me a clipboard. Linda like a new patient at the doctor’s office. She asks me to fill it out. There are questions like ‘What types of salons have you previously visited?’ Types of salons? WTF?!? ‘What products do you use in your hair?’ I put in the stupid goop that Michele buys for me somewhere. Who knows what the name is? I tell her I’m almost out of hair goop, and somehow by magic, new goop appears. Sometimes it changes a bit, but she assures me it’s the same thing.
The one good thing about the haircut is that they put a hot towel on my face. Boy o boy, that feels good.
Soon enough I was back in party mode. The highlight of the party was the turducken. Here’s the story of the turducken for you to enjoy.
Today I had to deal with the effect of the Sapphire/Slammer SQL worm at the company. I got the call at 7AM that all company systems were down.
ALL. SYSTEMS. DOWN. A fargin nightmare…
I’ll go into that fun later. Time for sleep now.

I got home from work today and the package from Tekgems.com was here. Jason Defillippo pointed me to the $11 Winamp remote earlier this week.
After 5 minutes I had the thing working. Fucking fantastic! Michele is stoked and I’m the hero.
Life is good.

I’m home from the meeting and can write a bit more.
The gathering was interesting and I’ll probably go again. I had brought my cantenna along. I wasn’t sure exactly what the meeitng woudl be like and thought it might be useful. As it turned out, the reception in the IHOP was good and I didn’t need it.
Many people wanted to look at the cantenna and ask me questions about it. I tried to explain what I could, but I’m not sure how clear my explanations were. A reporter from the LA Times asked me a few questions as well. Who knows, I may end up in the paper.
I mentioned that the cafe.com people spoke about their business. It was interesting, but hard to follow since I was on the side of the room and couldn’t follow along with the powerpoint slides he was talking from. There aren’t any cafe.com sites near Pasadena right now, so I doubt I’ll be using it anytime soon.
The next presenter was Cliff Skolnick of the Bay Area Wireless User Group (BAWUG). He had driven down to Los Angeles to discuss what the Bay Area folks were working on. He discussed there work on developing a free network of 802.11 access points for use by the general public. He mentioned several sites that I need to look into a little more including freenetworks.org, nocat.net, nodedb.com.
After I do some reading I’ll have a better opinion of what these guys are up to in San Fran.