Done last week (20160529Su - 0604Sa)

[mdlbear]

Not a great week psychologically, on the whole. Frazzled. Burned out? Probably. Lots of random, depressed-sounding self-talk, and practically everything I see or think about reminds me of something I've done wrong. In most cases the mistakes are unfixable, with drastic consequences. Doomed? That's how it feels. Doomed. (Cue Imperial March from Star Wars: doom doom doom doomty doom doomty doom...)

On the other hand, I've gotten almost all of the household computers -- at least, the ones that aren't G's -- upgraded with Ubuntu 16.04. It's a fast, easy install even on modern machines with secure boot, and my bootstrap script for setting up Gnome flashback, xmonad, and the other stuff I rely on is working pretty well now. I've also resurrected Kat's Acer Aspire (which I dubbed "aspie" because, while it's brilliant, it has trouble communicating -- took me forever to find the key combination that brings up the boot menu). And Emmy's Dell, which I'd thought had a broken charging port, turned out to just need a real Dell charger. :P

G is a professional system administrator -- he can do his own upgrades.

I also bought a new washer for downstairs. It arrives Tuesday, which means that this weekend's project is clearing a path to the downstairs laundry room. Also, most likely, putting up shelves in the garage and the downstairs closet, and curtain rods on N's door.

Yesterday's amusement -- high point of the week, actually -- was Ticia waking me up and teaching me how to play fetch. Really -- she batted her crinkle ball off the bed, picked it up and brought it back, batted it off again, brought it back, ... By that time I was awake and had gotten the hint, so I tossed it for her to fetch. Did that a couple of times. She doesn't usually bring the ball back to me, so I suspect that she thinks she invented the game all by herself. And so she did.

See also, xkcd: My Friend Catherine.

Notes & links:

0529Su
  * up 6ish; W=195.4; shower
  : I like min, but it doesn't work for my workflow -- no "make link" plugin, and in
    general not very configurable.  Might be useful for looking at local files, since it
    starts up very quickly.  Might be fun to hack.
  * Upgrading Purple.  It's the last of my current Ubuntu laptops.  (there are some
    others around the house)
  * Upgrading Blackbird, N's old Lenovo netbook, from Win7starter -> xubuntu
    Some problems with what appears to be a flaky F6 key.  Some problems with the
    bootstrap script, but that's not surprising considering how untested it is.
  : Google chrome is no longer supported on 32-bit systems.  Switching to Chromium on the
    netbooks.
  : Blackbird still has problems - doesn't come back from suspend, and makes noise on
    boot.  Trying to install gnome; maybe xfce has problems.  OTOH maybe it's the box.
    -> gnome-flashback has an unstated dependency on gnome-panel, which is what actually
       drags in all the other stuff it needs.
    -> beep on startup seems to have been the fact that the USB stick was first on the
       boot menu.  Suspend fixed by editing /etc/default/grub and adding
       "hpet=disable highres=off nohz=off" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
  : I have a box of cat on my desk.
  * 15min:  Finished shredding the contents of the paper bag that's been sitting next to
    my desk for a long time.  Mostly receipts & such, that didn't need shredding.
  * ordered LG Electronics 4.5 cu. ft. High-Efficiency Front Control Top Load Washer in White,
    ENERGY STAR-WT1501CW - The Home Depot
  : The kitchen's a mess.  It'll probably take me an hour to do the dishes tomorrow.

0531Mo Memorial Day
  * up 5:45; W=195.6; laundry, dishes
  * Tried YD's Dell laptop.  Works fine *with a Dell charger*.
  * Tried OD's Acer.  *finally* found out how to get to the BIOS, which turns out to be
    DEL AND F2 if you're in secure boot mode, not F2 the way all the docs say.  One has to
    explicitly enable the F12 boot menu.
  : In both cases, enabling legacy boot makes it refuse to boot from the hard disk,
    although in the YD's case you can select Windows from the boot menu.
    One can apparently get a UEFI Ubuntu install image, but the Acer is too locked down
    for that to work.  -> Had to make the installer with StartupDiskCreator.
    Stupid goddamn thing doesn't have an ethernet port, either.  Gonna be a long wait.
    -> gave it the name "aspie" because obvious.
    -> Took less time than I expected.  802-11N vs 100Mbit ethernet?
  : The current installer apparently boots in either UEFI or legacy mode.
  : The Lenovo netbook apparently _is_ a 64bit CPU; I just had a bad installer.  Probably
    worth fixing, though the small RAM means that it would get tighter.  Later.
  * 2ish shopping.  Cat food, litter, eggs, lemonade, granola, bread.
  * put up a couple of pictures (upstairs in the hallways)
  @ Interconnection.org (via Chaos)
    Charitable Computer Reuse and Recycling.  Lenovo X230 8G RAM $400.
  * First pass at formatting "The Hardest Part of Love".  Verbatim has lots of problems,
    not the least of which is that apostrophes disappear.  Weird.  Formatting it properly
    will be tedious. -> the apostrophes were unicode characters that aren't in TeX's TT
    font.  Replaced them with real apostrophes; they'll get fixed in typesetting.

0531Tu
  * up 6:15; W=195.6; dishes
  @ Satirical erotica author Chuck Tingle's massive troll of conservative sci-fi fans,
    explained - Vox I love it when an evil plan backfires. f(Deirdre Saoirse Moen)
  * 10:30 Dr. Downey UNW -> no problems.  PSA looks good; the nodule is more likely to be
    on a vein than the prostate, and hasn't changed over the last three years.  So.
  % Good progress at work this afternoon, though I was restless most of the time.  It's
    possible that my good mood was due to having other things to be optimistic about.
  & Left work at about 5:30, but the traffic looked bad, and I'd driven down from my
    appointment.  Sat in the park where I could watch the traffic and read my phone; left
    at 6 when things were looking calmer, and had a pretty easy drive home.
  @ The Dark Art of Mastering Music | Pitchfork (solarbird)
  * write check for Giselle
  & fiddled with pens.
  * Finished chording out Hardest Part of Love.  The source's chord positioning is
    rather suspect. 

0601We
  * up 5:50; W=195.6; laundry, dishes
  * schedule work on van, preferably Thursday
  @ Painful lessons from a pastor’s viral transgender post – Baptist News Global
    Seven things I’m learning about transgender persons f()
  % On the whole a pretty unproductive day at work.
  * 4-5 phone call from Shilpa Tiwari ($N)
  % Evening after dinner:  still feeling kind of strung out. (??  Not sure whether that's
    even remotely accurate.  Restless.  Bit of a headache.  Tired, even though I haven't
    done much.  Listless.)  Not sure I've ever used "listless" to describe myself before.
  & installed 64-bit Ubuntu on Blackbird.  Went smoothly.  Still a few glitches in the
    bootstrap script.
  % slept badly.  woke up at 3:30, but did get back to sleep eventually.
  
0602Th
  * up 6:30; W=195.6; laundry,..., dishes
  * Pay bills:  mortgage, HELOC, power, Amex.  Transfer $1K to BECU.  (Only that, because
    the mortgage etc are being paid out of my UB account because it's quicker.)
  * 9am leave van at Elliott's -> $1118 -- one front brake caliper and rotor had to be
    replaced.  All fluids flushed; lube; new front wipers
  : N wants me to come in for an on-site.  Which means that I really need to sit down and
    -figure out- _write down_ exactly what I'm looking for, and what would be close
    enough.  (Which would be the hard part)
  @ File-format analysis tools for archivists [LWN.net] (by Gary McGath)
  @ Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis [LWN.net]
  @ Repurposing Old Smartphones for Home Automation | Linux.com 
  @ Tom Digby Along Fantasy Way f(Barry Gold) !!!

0603Fr
  * up 5:30; W=195.6; dishes
  * 15min: some work on the blog make targets in River.  Will probably find its way into
    Tools soon.
  * Not much fun at work.  Still rebasing; finding some holes along the way.
  : G' used a hair dryer after dying Colleen's hair.  Naturally, it blew the breaker for
    half the upstairs.  And it's hard to find.  And the outside socket, which was usable
    for a month or two, is back off.  It must be controlled by a switch, but it's not
    clear where that is.
    -> ok, the breaker, at least, is the one I thought it was.  It just doesn't trip
       visibly, and takes considerable force to reset rather than just flicking it off.
       Damnit, I *told* them I needed 20A on that circuit.
    : and who the fsck thought it was a good idea to put all the upstairs plugs and lights
      on the same circuit, anyway?
  : Did I mention that Colleen's hair has been re-purpled?  It has.
  : and G' didn't take down the laundry, despite having been told explicitly to do so.
  % And I am short-tempered and antisocial.  Which is still no damned excuse.
  : Note to self:  neither the gnome nor the xfce power managers gets installed with
    reasonable defaults.  -> mention it at the end of bootstrap.sh
  % I'm never going to find exactly what I want in a job.  Probably not even close.  That
    both bothers me more and surprises me less than it should.
  * 15min: puttering.  Mostly worthless.

0604Sa
  * up 5:30ish; W=196.6; laundry, dishes
  % Ticia wanted to play fetch this morning.  So much fun!  I would toss her crinkle ball
    and she'd bring it back onto the bed.  Several times.  But she did it first, to make
    sure I knew what to do.  Silly human doesn't know how to play fetch with a cat.
  * first thing in the morning - reroute phone cord to router.  (Actually, simply replace
    it with the one I ran last night.)  It now goes behind the shelves instead of in front
  * Puttering.  Mostly bookshelf organizing, but also work space and window manager.
  * puttering.  Starting on clearing a path for the washer.  Brought up some books.
  % Back now hurting, so it would probably be inadvisable to do more box-moving.  :P
  . project for the weekend:  clear a path for the new washer.  That means emptying the
    laundry room and moving the kitchen cabinet section out of the hall.  Minimum.
  ! "This is not normal.  Even for me." -- self-talk after yet another wave of... I don't
    know.  Despair?  Will changing jobs help?  Or will it wreck the next one too?  The
    immediate trigger was some snippet of extremely despairing self-talk that just came
    out of nowhere, not referring to anything immediate.  That's been happening more and
    more often lately, which probably isn't a good sign.
  : N's family was out, and Kat and Rabbit were (and still are) derailed by their car
    running out of gas.  Went to Jones Barbecue; got pig ribs for me and Colleen.  Yum.
  % 9ish - very sleepy
  * Starlight (g's laptop) upgrade: Successfully installed the app that keeps Windows 10
    from installing.  One can resize a partition from windows 8, but it's taking forever.

Comments

[alatefeline]

Ticia is a good kitty and very smart. Way to train her human!

[technoshaman]

Whose laptop is/was Starlight?

For the record, my desktop now dual-boots W10-condomed Win7 Home Premium and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with kubuntu-desktop. (I didn't drop the *big* package... :) I need to figure out how to tell pulseaudio to target my headphones, and to switch easily; I also need to find the Everett Kaser game installer, drop Wine, and see if I can get my games to work. After that it's a matter of crossmounting C:\ onto the Linux side, and done.

[mdlbear]

It's the laptop that was given to G a couple of years ago by one grandparent or another. Decent machine, but no pointing stick or third mouse button. You might want to consider firing up alsamixer -- pulseaudio uses ALSA under the hood.

Has the kids' desktop been condomed? Probably needs that as well as a dual-boot setup. Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday.