Friday, August 27, 2004

Well, I'm thinking about buying an MP3 player with FM radio.

However, I don't know all the ins and outs. So I am faced with either doing tons of research, or just buying something that has some kind of appeal to it.

I don't know how much energy I really want to put into it,
to be honest.

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Rain again. The last look at weather.com showed me that here in central ohio we were facing at least 6-7 more days with rain in a row.

Rain is okay sometimes. But I'm probably going to be out one of the upcoming days for several hours in it, and that is not an appealing idea.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Today's the first day of school for one of my high schooler's and my jr. high schooler. The other high schooler has her first day tomorrow.

The summer sure did go by fast. I wish we could have done more together - but they were busy with their friends and didn't have time for dad.

The passage of time becomes more and more painful as you see friends and loved ones move on in their lives and leave you behind.

Sigh.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

As the school season begins, I find myself attending
various orientation sessions, etc. with the kids.
Thus, sometimes my news is not so new...

Anyways, Dan - my 15 yr old - brought home a friend's Japanese DVD of Naruto (spelling?) anime. We've
been reading the manga (comics) now for a few months.

Other than some objection I have to the language, I had a fun time watching the first of the DVDs. It feels like I'm reading the manga - the story is pretty much the same,
but well animated and with colors instead of just being black and white.

Interesting experience. Most times we've tried anime and manga from the same universe supposedly, the stories were not very close.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Another work week begins. Who knows - perhaps this will be a good one ...

Got to see what new issues my users have with GNOME;
we are moving from OpenWindows (ancient desktops) to GNOME and users seem to find the most peculiar series of problems.

Friday, August 13, 2004

Took my son last night to see The Day After Tomorrow at the cheap seat theater we have.

We had a good time, even though there were many problems I had with various events that took place in the movie.

We just hadn't hung out together for some time. I'm going to try to make some time to do more hanging out with the kids, even though housework continues to stream at me, because time is slipping away quickly.

It's been a hard summer for me, personally, as well as watching the kids grow older and more indepedent. I miss days where we would hang out and play video games, watch anime, eat and laugh. These days, they are out with friends, working, or whatever.

And I end up sitting at home, alone, missing them.

Monday, August 09, 2004

Professor Magnus Larry

Cartoon Orbit is a cute promotional gimmick by Cartoon Network to entertain all the kids who like to collect.

Until very recently, it required one to be running Windows and to be on the Internet though, even though it is written in Flash.

In the most recent incarnation, it appears to at least be browsable by other platforms with Flash - maybe cross platform Flash apps are becoming realizable?
Why is it that people come along, thinking they have such a better idea, and it always causes more problems?

For instance, there is a particular open source community which decided to move their source code from sf.net to their own servers.

Fine - that's certainly their right. Then they withdrew access to the code, because there were companies violating the GPL. Guess the code isn't so open source any longer, is it?

Then they moved their mailing lists a couple of times, and it looks like now have disbanded them altogether, moving to a weird wiki format that is non-obvious to the browser how to use, and an irc channel which can't be reached from sites running filtering software.

So basically, the only software that performs this particular function has closed themselves off from the rest of the world. Seems like such a waste.

Sunday, August 08, 2004

Survived another week. Lots of family fussiness, stress at work, etc. Then, yesterday, we took a family field trip to WV, visiting relatives first from the spouse's side of the family, then from my side.

We left around 7am - got back around midnight. Then, the body went ahead and woke up as normal
around 4-5am.

I'm beat. This is hard for an old man...

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Trying to publish to blogger from email

Well, I wanted to see if this posting works
--
Tcl - The glue of a new generation.
Larry W. Virden
Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should
be construed as representing my employer's opinions.
-><-
Try out the new blog template, etc.
Today is quite a hectic day. At my place of employment, we use a login id to our systems that consists of 3 initials and 2 digits, with the 2 digits representing the department in which we report.

Well, last week, there was a realignment of responsibilities.
This means that nearly 150 people will, tomorrow, log into their systems with a new login id.

That would not be quite so bad - but then there are all the programs which, incorrectly, include the login ids, and the executables that have paths or emails to those old login ids.

So today I am scurrying about, looking for what needs to be fixed.

What fun!

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Well, yesterday was my 49th birthday. It was rather a quiet one. The kids ran around town with their friends, the wife worked chores, and I ended up by myself. I think that one, or maybe two, of the kids said happy birthday. I got a few automated happy birthday wishes from email servers. Oh, and at least two of the kids friends told me happy birthday. But apparently at this age, the wife must think I'm too old to be told happy birthday, or to get any sort of recognition that I survived putting up with the family another year. At least it was better than last year's, when I was in a panic about a crisis in the family.

Monday, August 02, 2004

Well, today's another birthday. The last year has been filled with a variety of emotions and events,
good and bad. I've a child who is now legally an adult in some senses of the word. I've another who is learning to drive. I've a third who has moved from spending nearly all his time on video games and animation to nearly all his time socializing with girls... And even the baby isn't a baby any longer - he too is growing up to be a young man, dating, varying interests, etc.

I'm trying to deal with what this means to me, facing motality and even more financial issues than before; sobering reality about what impact my life has made in the world, and dealing with looking into
a future that may be pretty lonely. Along with that, I've increasing pain from the top of my head to the soles of my feet and other physical issues.

I am proud of who my children are turning out to be - well... I'd love to see the oldest get a job. But he is trying to ... he's just not had any luck so far finding something. So at least they are something that has gone right to some degree in my life.