The Mandelbear's Musings

Well, well. An entire week. Which just happens to coincide with the end of the month, this time.

Did a little work on the network configuration, aimed at making things more stable in the DMZ (the area between the Internet modem/router (polaris) and the inside gateway/router (stargate)). In particular, I got rid of an obsolete DHCP reservation for cygnus, that was conflicting with stargate's static IP address. Gleep! No wonder stargate's WiFi dropped out every so often.

Also for computer geeks: I got Colleen a 7" tablet. It's a Jazz, on sale at Office Depot for $70. Markedly inferior to my Nexus 7, but it does what she wants it to: web browsing and email. The only problem right now is printing; that's going to require setting up Google cloudprint. Which is kind of stupid for talking to a CUPS printer, but...

I *finally* got autoraise back -- turns out that the compiz window manager doesn't actually listen to the desktop config items anymore; Ubuntu has hacked them up to accomodate the Unity desktop. Which is Unbearable.

A number of other geeky items that I ordered during the last week dribbled in, including a case and USB-OTG cable for the Nexus, a really tiny 32-GB USB drive, a couple of uSD cards and adapters (16- and 32-GB), and a couple of other items that suggest that I probably need to stay off of Amazon for a while.

We got Chaos a microwave oven (hers had died). Colleen got the amethyst necklace she'd commissioned at Orycon -- this involved a trip to Wayward.

Moving on, ... I don't really like the way my weight has been going. I think that much of the recent increase was due to going off my diuretic. It was an interesting experiment, but my BP's on the high edge of normal right now; it may be worthwhile going back on the meds.

Of course, my BP would probably go down if I lost 30 poumds, too. Which would be better for me in other ways as well.

The last time I successfully lost weight was my senior year in college. Over 40 years ago.

Humph. One of the things I really like about commuting by bus is that it gives me time to read. I'm not a particularly fast reader, a trait which is better adapted to poetry than to novels. I am, nevertheless, reading two books right now. The one on my Nexus (via Kindle) is Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by E. Gabriella Coleman -- an anthropologist's view of hacker culture. Fascinating.

The other, on my phone from Gutenberg via Cool Reader, is Pride and Prejudice, which has been highly recommended to me but was something I was always leery of. It's... ok, I guess. Perhaps someone more familiar with the genre could tell me whether it's meant to be funny -- there's an undercurrent of what appears to be wry amusement on the part of the author. Perhaps one problem is simply the lack of characters I can easily identify with. I'm curious, but not involved.

Anyway... details in the notes, as usual. I should probably try to get back on a twice/week schedule, shouldn't I?

Woke up from a dream -- which I actually remembered some of, which is unusual in itself -- that involved looking over the edge of a ledge that seemed to be part of a building being renovated on the left, and part of a cliff on the right. I do get nervous around unprotected drop-offs, but don't remember dreaming about it before. The building under construction, college caffeteria, and unfamiliar city streets are common.

Most of the morning -- ok, the whole morning -- was taken up by a seminar on export controls. The speaker managed to be both informative and entertaining, so that was good. Spent some time talking to people, as well. No walkies.

My new netbook has been shipped, and is scheduled to arrive a week from Monday. The new scooter charger I ordered arrived.

Somehow, a number of things didn't get done despite being on my to.do list right out where I could see them. I feel rather upset about that.

I did get some work done on the makefile for audio recording directories, and a little practice on the Conflikt set. So that's good.

Interesting link via the company Yammer feed on the Future of Interaction Design.

The main event was a shopping expedition, to REI, for bike accessories. Mainly a helmet, but along the way I couldn't resist three new pairs of socks. Some of the oldest ones have gotten threadbare.

Changed the sheets, washed one of the quilts, made lamb chili for dinner, didn't take a walk.

Some really nice snuggle, though, and I slept well modulo a dream involving some weird party food and coming back to find that a a leak in the ceiling had sogged my half of the bed and made parts of the kitchen floor so rotten you could put your foot through it into the slimy water filling the crawl space. It appeared to be our house, though the layout was completely unrecognizable.

Dreams about unfamiliar houses probably map onto unexplored parts of my mind. Not so sure I want to go poking around this one.

Several good links under the cut.

Amazingly, I finished my taxes yesterday, and e-filed them a few minutes after midnight. This makes me feel very much better, and reasonably pleased with myself. I still have to do chaoswolf's, but that'll be trivial.

I remembered my dream from the night before, probably because I woke up very abruptly.

Interesting insight of the day: I know intellectually that I enjoyed riding my bicycle, but what I actually remember is being cold, wet, tired, miserable, and in pain. (Or various subsets of these.) Guess it's not really all that surprising that I don't ride anymore; I may want to reconsider. It probably applies to some other things, too.

Spent most of my time at work setting up the new Mac mini, which I've named whitewood after Whitewood Creek in the Black Hills of South Dakota -- most of our machines are named after rivers. I also spent some time preparing to move my desktop from the ageing Dell to a nice, quiet Shuttle box that currently houses a server called nile. I love Linux's ability to multi-home network interfaces, and also the wonderful x2vnc, which lets me move the mouse and keyboard seamlessly between a Linux box and a Mac.

I've already raised the signal on the most important links.

I slept well even without cyclobenzaprine last night (though a hot bath was a pretty good substitute); there are odd bits of dream floating around in my memory now. Something involving rain, a large building that was something between a hotel and my old junior high school, swapping songs with gmcdavid, and two guitars: Plink and Snuggles.

I hardly ever remember even that much of my dreams. If my subconscious is trying to send me a message, it will have to speak more clearly. It's mumbling.