picture of me

Chaos Manor Home Page > View Home Page > Current Mail Page > Chaos Manor Reviews Home Page

THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 529 July 28 - August 3, 2008

read book now

HOME

VIEW

MAIL

Columns

BOOK Reviews

Chaos Manor Reviews

Platinum Subscription:

  CHAOS MANOR REVIEWS

FOR BOOKS OF THE MONTH 1994-Present Click HERE

Last Week's View               Next Week's View

emailblimp.gif (23130 bytes)

For Current Mail click here.

Atom FEED from Chaos Manor

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Highlights this week:

  For boiler plate, search engine, and notes on what in the world this place is, see below.

For CHAOS MANOR REVIEWS click here

For Previous Weeks of the View, SEE VIEW HOME PAGE

read book now

If you intend to send MAIL to me, see the INSTRUCTIONS.

 

 

 read book now

 

This is a Day Book. Pages are in chronological, not blogological order.

line6.gif (917 bytes)

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Monday, July 28, 2008

Long day yesterday, and column to do today. And I'm unaccountably sleepy this morning although I slept until 10 AM.

I don't seem to have much in the way of wit this morning...

=========

Their politics were not mine, but one can't help wondering about the irony of it all:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
world/us_and_americas/article738641.ece

==================

 

For platinum subscription:

Platinum subscribers enable me to work on what I think is important without worrying about economics. My thanks to all of you.

Patron Subscription:

Did you subscribe and never hear from me? Click here!.

 

 

 read book now

 

Monday   TOP   Current Mail

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Tuesday,  July 29, 2008  

1230:  At 11:42 we had a 5.8 Earthquake centered in Chino Hills, about 6 miles down. I was dealing with email when the screen began moving. For about 10 seconds it was gentle rolling motion, then at lest 2 sharp shocks, one of which caused some blank disks to fall off a table, but otherwise no damage. A bit disconcerting.

There were no power failures although Roberta says that lights downstairs blinked. I didn't even see that. There was no loss of Internet connectivity.

In any event all is well. 

USGS is now saying 5.4 and 8.5 miles down 4 miles SE of Diamond Bar. Cal Tech is still saying 5.8 and 6 miles down and in Chino Hills, but the location seems to be about the same. Diamond Bar and Chino Hills are adjacent. Two freeways go through canyons in that area.

And that's probably enough on the earthquake.

===============

Ballad of Rodger Young

Maybe of interest to your readers, there are links to recordings of The Ballad of Rodger Young in several formats on this page:

http://www.west-point.org/users/
usma1981/38405/west_point/songs/RodgerYoung.htm 

Anyone who's read Starship Troopers and doesn't know what the song sounds like should pay a visit.

Wade

A good performance by the USMA Glee Club. Fair warning: with Firefox at least this needs the Real plugin. That takes installation, and you want to be careful not to allow it to take over everything. I told it that it was the default for nothing whatever and installed it. The song played fine after that. I did get a couple of popup advertisements related to Real, but when I shut them down they have not come back.

I remember that song from when I was maybe 10; it was on the radio a lot for a while. And see mail.

===================

Earthquake update:

They have downgraded it to 5.4 and everyone now seems to agree on 8 miles down. It gets less likely that it was a fore-shock as time goes on. That we can hope for.

============

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 

Tuesday   TOP  Current Mail

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Wednesday,  July 30, 2008

We went to the Hollywood Bowl for Tchaikovsky's Fourth last night. A party of a dozen or so of us have season tickets, and we meet before the performance and sit together. It's a fair walk up the hill. We used to meet in Hollywood, have dinner at the Hamburger Hamlet (across the street from Grauman's Chinese) and walk up to the Bowl, which made for a pretty good walk. Alas the Hamlet closed
 (http://la.eater.com/archives/2007/01/08/
more_burger_busts_hamburger_hamlet_
hollywood_closed_downey_diner_demolished.php)

and with it the easy parking. It's as well since about then I began to have balance problems and the walk up to the Bowl would have been pretty strenuous.

Anyway there's walking enough just in what we do now, and I ended up fairly exhausted. Got up at 0800 but went back to bed after breakfast. I wish this wretched morning exhaustion would end.

I have a lot of work to do today, and I'd best get at it. There was no damage from the Earthquake, and if Sable had any anticipation of it she didn't show it to us. It came as a complete surprise to us.

I seem to be a bit clumsy this morning.

I hear on my radio that Matt, whoever he is, is advertising on how to become a millionaire by flipping houses. Yeah, this is a great time for people who have lost their jobs to invest in house flipping. (Lest I have any readers who do not understand the ironic mode, I mean by that this this is a terrible time to get into that business, and one should not do so. I suspect that (1) I have no readers who did not understand what I meant and (2) that I have at least a few readers who would have sent me letters of protest on behalf of their non-existent less intelligent brethren; but perhaps I am mistaken.

==============

There is mail including a short discussion of mental disorders and growing up bright.

=================

For those not familiar with the Heritage Foundation, there is some particularly good stuff at the current web page http://www.myheritage.org/ if you are interested in runaway Federal spending and the growing possibility of Depression due to runaway deficit spending.

 

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 

Wednesday  TOP  Current Mail

 

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Thursday,  July 31, 2008

QUERY: I am about to change main communications computers. One of the requirements is that I get Firefox going on it. I have it on Alexis, and it has a ton of passwords, customizations, plug-ins, and such. When I installed Firefox the only import options I am offered is to import from Internet Explorer. I have nothing on Internet Explorer I care to import, but I sure have a lot on Firefox on another networked computer if I knew how to do it. Suggestions?

 

THERE IS A LOT ABOUT THIS BELOW.  We seem to have a happy ending, and I will give the explicit instructions for doing it. For now WE HAVE APPARENTLY SOLVED THE PROBLEM, so please don't respond for now.  And THANKS TO ALL who helped, but especially thanks to Jeff Cohen.

============

I got up at 0800 and although I want to get back to bed I am going to see if I can get a full day's work done. That includes changing main communications systems, and writing that up into a column or part of one. It promises to be an interesting day if I don't weaken.

I know how to do most of this, but the Firefox setup seems a bit difficult. It don't seem to want to be transferred to another system.

==========

There is considerable mail including an important note from Ed Hume on ADHD and other such matters, and a rather lengthy comment by me.

And now I have to get to work on moving to the new system. Outlook is driving me mad. More in the column, or at least I hope so.

===============

Transferring Firefox profiles to another machine

I've successfully done this. It isn't hard at all, it's just necessary to know where Firefox keeps all of its files. They are in hidden directories.

The first place is "\Documents and Settings\your name\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox" and the second is "\Documents and Settings\your name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox"

Just zip them up and unzip on the other machine. Note that "Local settings" and both "Application Data" are hidden. Windows Explorer will not show them by default (it's an advanced view setting).

Jeff Cohen

My problem is that I cannot figure out where Microsoft Vista puts those files! I am not familiar enough with Vista to understand its search features (if it continues to be as bad as I think, I may just scrub Vista and go to XP) and I have been unable to locate where Vista puts Firefox application files. Sigh. Maybe it's my head not working properly, but this seems needlessly confusing.

Does anyone know where those files hide? I suppose I ought to learn all this.

=============

In God's Name why is Rush Limbaugh replaying that neurotic woman who called in yesterday, and he keeps running it over an over. I suppose it makes him feel that he is clever and demonstrates his wisdom in running roughshod over an annoying whiny neurotic? Has Limbaugh lost his mind?

========

Well, Firefox keeps its profile information in two different hidden directories in XP. Neither of those directories exist in VISTA. There are analogs of them, but I have been unable to figure out where they are.  I hate Microsoft. Why put key files in obscure and hidden places then change those places? Do they hate users? Do they want us all to become systems programmers? I hate them.

I have copied everything I can think of that might be relevant, but when I open Firefox over on the Vista machine it has no bookmarks or anything else.

The simple solution is to scrub Vista and install XP on the new machine. Then it ought to be simple. Ye gods, have I become senile?

I am pretty sure I have lost my mind.

Is there any way to make the VISTA search panel STAY WITH ME while I look at the properties of various folders it has found?  That is, I open Start, type Profiles in the search window, some places appear, and when I try to look at one everything else closes down. Then I have to start all over.  The XP desktop search function has a way to let you open the darned thing so it doesn't go away; but I can't figure out how to make that happen in Vista.

 

Clearly I need to learn more about using Vista, but it's all so very different from everything I ever did before. It was all right for games and office and such, but when I want to do anything more complicated  it's all different.  After 30 years of working with these little machines I am finally overwhelmed.

I suppose I ought to go take a nap.

 

=====

But then this happened:

Jerry Pournelle wrote:

I suspect I have lost my mind. After a couple of exchanges of emails I sent this to Jeff Cohen

I can't figure out what to copy from the XP machine to the Vista machine, and where to copy it from and where to copy it to. Microsoft is attempting to drive me insane by hiding all the relevant folders but I think I have told it to show me everything now. But I still don't understand this stuff. What the heck is "Roaming"??? Why have they done all this to us?

Jerry Pournelle Chaos Manor

And Jeff Cohen answered:

Copy the entire subtree at "\Documents and Settings\your name\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla" on XP to "\Users\your name\AppData\Local\Mozilla" on Vista. AppData is also hidden. Then copy the entire subtree at "\Documents and Settings\your name\Application Data\Mozilla" on XP to "\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla" on Vista.

and for the XP locations above better to copy the entire Mozilla tree and not just Firefox.

And that seems to have done it!! At least we seem to have a start!

More in the column. I hope.

 

I could use MORE HELP:

Firefox seems to have transferred BUT: I have 80 open tabs. On my XP system they appear in three rows and there are up and down arrows to increase the number of rows if needed.

On the new system I get one enormous long line, with arrows at the ends, so I see only one row at any given time. I am sure there is a setting that changes this, but "View" doesn't seem to have any such setting, and there are so damned many settings...

Of course I know Google exists, and that I have some resources, and my head is not entirely vacant; thanks to those who informed me of all that. I suppose it's time to emphasize something I have to say every now and then:

THIS IS A DAY BOOK

From the View page:

Think of VIEW as my column on the installment plan, but there are major differences; here you see what happens as it happened. That has some disadvantages: it's not as smooth as the column. There is little rewriting. It's a day book.

I appreciate help from readers. I generally write up the problem here, then do what I can to solve it; often a reader will KNOW, saving me much time, and for which I am very grateful. Even more often readers will think they know how to do things, and those turn out not to work, showing me that I am not the only one out here that is confused about using these little machines.

I have often pretended to know everything, but the column ought to make it clear that often I have to stumble my way to the happy ending.

Anyway if anyone KNOWS how to change the view of the line of tabs I'd appreciate the help. I've looked through much of the Firefox Options and tools and I just can't find it.

======

Well I have found out how to set the tab bar display in Tab Mix Plus options -- but there is no such options in the tools menu on the VISTA system. So after lunch I may have to uninstall Tab mix Plus and start over, or some such, to get that into my display bar.  Dang this is complicated.

Now I find that on the VISTA machine I am being told that Tab Mix Plus is not compatible with this version of Firefox.  That sucks. I will experiment to see if there is a compatible version, but this is ridiculous. It works just fine on this XP machine.

Apparently what I have is Firefox 2 something on the XP system, and they have "improved" it to Firefox 3 which is what we have on the Vista machine. And Much of what I used to do on Firefox and which made it valuable including displaying the tabs in rows rather than one long incomprehensible row NO LONGER WORKS>

In other words Mozilla like Microsoft is more interested in the happiness of its programmers than in the users.  Bloody hell.

==============

Well, Firefox seems to have been improved to unusability. If there's any way I can get the OLD Firefox on the VISTA machine I would appreciate the information. The new one simple doesn't work the way I expect and if I am going to learn a new browser I may as well learn the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Does anyone know how to install Firefox 2.whatever instead of Firefox 3+ on a Vista machine?  Because if not, I think I will dump it and try Internet Explorer instead.

=============

Moving Firefox Profile

Jerry,

Information/Instructions are at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing+up+your+information 

Best, Everett Harper

Except that it doesn't work with Firefox 3 which is what installed on the Vista machine. If I can figure out how to scrub Firefox 3 and install Firefox 2 all kinds of wonderful options work including just copying things now that I know where the stuff is kept.

=============

AHA!  I found at Digitalchemy that you can install the "developer" version of Tab Mix Plus for Firefox 3, and I did so; and that seems to be working. At least the tabs are now arranged in lines again!

I am now installing Front Page 2003 on the Vista machine. Assuming that goes well, and it seems to be, I should be able to move all communications over to the Vista Quad. That ought to stop the infuriating long hangup pauses this machine experiences when Outlook goes out for mail. Outlook 2007 calendar is better than the older one, and I suspect I will like Outlook 2007 once I get started. I will have to live with Word 2007, which doesn't do dictionaries right and has to be relearned damned near from scratch, but I do the columns mostly on the iMac anyway so that's not such a disaster.

If this all works, I will have to rethink Roxanne's role: she does games (only lately I have done World of Warcraft on the Mac) and she's the writing machine (except lately I have done most of that on the iMac) and serves as the place where we keep the master copies of all documents. That is due eventually to be replaced by the Extreme Intel Quad as soon as I get that built.

Anyway, I seem to have solved most of the problems!

 

Thanks to all the readers who helped. As to those who asked why I don't just Google, I did, but I'm not as fast as I used to be, and besides, I heard directly from half a dozen readers who had already had these problems and KNEW what to do about them. That's one of the big advantages of being me: Sure I can do the work, and have done it, but often a reader knows more than I do, and it sure saves me time -- and ENERGY, which I don't have so much of as I used to.

===============

Well this is me on the Vista machine. Front Page works. There are a tonne of upgrades that I probably ought to download and install -- three separate Service Packs for this version -- but that can wait. The letters are tiny, but that's probably the monitor, and it should be better when I get this over to the main desk and the big flat screen monitor. At least I hope so because this is intolerable. I don't remember how you get to the screen resolution settings in Vista. I know it's more complicated than it was in XP -- thanks, Microsoft, for making everything we learned over the years not only obsolete, but doing it for a system with no particular logic.

WSFTP32 doesn't work. WSFTP95 works but they have "improved" the interface, and it's nowhere as convenient as the older one was. The older one can't access the registry whatever that means; I have a feeling it's some kind of Vista security thing, but it doesn't ask for permission, it just dies with the error message that it can't access the registry. WSFTP32 which is in the same folder works all right and uses the same initializations.  It works, but it's not fun.

Another thing that is not fun is this tiny text. I hesitate to change the font sizes, but I can't read this. I am hoping that when I change to another monitor it will be all right, but this is a big glass 19" monitor and no resolution I can set will make this text large enough that I can actually see it.  I don't believe I can continue like this, so I may be stuck until I can do something else. Vista recommend that I set things at 1280 x 1024 but that makes the text tiny. I thought Vista was supposed to fix that sort of thing but apparently not. If I set to 1280 by 768 it looks odd but it's large enough to see.

I haven't been through these problems in a while....  And my memory isn't working. This is a lousy keyboard, too

The blooming fonts have all changed to Times New Roman. I have to manually change to Georgia, and it doesn't seem to stick when I do that.  AHA. You need to go to PAGE OPTIONS and change the default font. At lest Clippy knows how to tell me to do that. For all his irritations, he was better help than a lot of the more modern stuff.

===================

OK. I am getting used to it all. At this resolution, and having found the various settings, and how to make Outlook display incoming mail in Plain Text (it's entirely different in Outlook 2007 from the older Outlook) and allowing for this awful keyboard and mouse, maybe I will change over. I seem to have most of this working. WS_FTP95 is nowhere as convenient as WS-FTP32 but it does work and seems to access the registry just fine; why the other one doesn't access the registry is not apparent.

There are other irritations, but overall it works, and by gollies the machine never locks up. There are no hesitations. I have 98 tabs open in Firefox and several in IE. I am running a bunch of stuff in background. And it all works smoothly. So I guess I'll have to give it all a try.

Shutting down this system. I will physically move this machine to my main office work station, and take Alexis, the current communications system (only I am writing this on Bette the Quad 6600 which is what I am about to move) --Alexis goes on line out here. For the moment.

She's a pretty good system except for Outlook. I need to find her a home.  Maybe I'll install a good disk burner and use her for all that. She has a lot of disk capacity.

==================

All right. Bette is now at my principal desk, and connected at 1280 x 1024 to my elderly but very nice LaCie monitor. Everything seems normal. I can read the text from a distance. It does seem to be working just fine. I may have got my transition done. 

============

One thing about Macs. With the iMac 20, move the table it's on and the darned thing shuts itself off. I mean powers off. I had to hold the ON button down for about  a count of 20 to get it to come back on. I had to move it in order to change machines at the stand next to it, but all I did was roll the table it was on. Maybe that stretched a power line, but the plug was still in, and the switch on the power strip was lighted.

==============

2350: I am still using the Quad 6600, Vista ultimate, and Outlook 2007. I have a new copy of InBoxer, the Bayesian spam filter I have relied on for some years. That is installed and seems to work. It has not yet asked me for my registration code, but I have that.

Firefox is not entirely well behaved, but I'm taming it. I have the Mac running again and connected. Vista on the Quad 6600 does not seem to have any of the problems I had with Vista on Roxanne, and I am not sure why other than that we have lots more memory and cycles on this system.

FrontPage 2003 is working fine. WS_FTP95 is working and is only minorly less convenient than the previous WS_FTP32 I used for years (and still use on all but Vista machines). Adobe Acrobat reader is working fine, and doesn't seem to eat cycles on this system as it did on the XP system.

I am getting used to the quirks in Outlook 2007 (some are definitely improvements) and Word 2008; no big problems. Cutting and pasting from Outlook to FrontPage works as it always did. One thing is clear: Vista and Outlook 2007 are both more comfortable with a wide screen than with my LaCie 20" square. I begin to see why most laptops are now configured as "wide screen" (but achieve it by chopping the top of a larger square like the t42p).

And after supper I went to LASFS (I am supposed to be on my way to be Guest of Honor at a convention in Dayton but I was not sufficiently confident of my energy level to do that); when I got back Roberta and I watched Burn Notice, which is sort of Get Smart only the hero is impressively competent); then I took Sable for a 2 mile walk, and now it's pretty well time to get to sleep.

If I could be sure that I'd have the energy I managed to have today, I'd have gone to the convention. I really am sorry to miss it. Niven is on his way (there by now I guess) and he can show the flag for both of us, but I am sorry to have let them down. Perhaps I will recover completely enough to be able to go another time. I sure hope so.

So we will see about tomorrow. I have a column to do; what I will feel like in the morning isn't entirely clear. So off to bed and find out.

=======

George Noory has a guest who can send beams of energy out of his eyes.  Is this like the ability of plants to detect distress? There were a number of stories about plant telepathy. Anyway this chap is going to try for The Amazing Randi's money in a demonstration. Now that may be interesting, but I would bet small amounts that it's a lot easier to send beams -- visible beams -- of purple light with gold flecks in it, than it is to get a nickel out of Randi.

Anyway this chap says he can prove he can send beams of energy out of his eyes. He also claims that there is nothing paranormal about it at all, but since everyone says there are not energy beams from one's eyes, Randi accepts that it's a claim of the paranormal.  Interesting again.

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 

Thursday   TOP  Current Mail

 

 
 

This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Friday,  August 1, 2008

0825: Got to bed late, woke up at 0800. I think I will turn in for an hour or so. I really did not get enough sleep.

Bette, the Vista Ultimate 64-bit Quad 6600, continues to work smoothly. Outlook 2007 is pretty well adjusted (had to recast some of my rules, but it tells me which ones aren't working). InBoxer, the Bayesian spam filter, is installed and running just fine. I think I can quite worrying about the transition. I'll get the column done this weekend, and that will be the main story.

Thanks to all who called attention to a rather ugly spelling error in yesterday's View. I fixed that about midnight, and thanks again for calling attention to it.

==========

1105 Still sleepy. I'll get some mail up, then I think I'll have a nap. No problems with the system.

DOES anyone KNOW if the old Windows Desktop Search that installs and works with XP is available for Vista?  And if so, where I should look?

But of course I ought to learn the Vista search system: is there a primer anywhere? A good on line baby talk introduction to Vista search?  I do note that Outlook 2007 has a decent (ie much faster than the one in Outlook XP) FIND, but that works only one folder at a time. What I really want is to learn the basics of the Vista search system including what it indexes.

Thanks to all those who have sent me URL's and instructions. I'll get to work on those.

=========

Outlook 2007 formats mail in plaintext differently from Outlook 2003, and it may be that Vista does paste special differently. In any event:

Some new rules about mail:

Please put the subject in the body of the mail. That is, the subject in the subject line tells ME what the mail is about, but transferring that subject line takes three operations, and costs me a lot of time. In future please put the subject in the body of the mail as well. In other words: what's in the "Subject" box will not get into the published version; and if there's no subject in the body of the message I will likely decide to just skip that one.

In the past I could simply "forward" the message and that would put the subject where I could copy it easily; but either Vista or Outlook 2007 has completely dicombobulated the formatting of the "forward" operation and made it unusable for cut and paste.

Second, as always: do not end lines with line feeds or carriage returns. Just type. End paragraphs with double carriage returns. I see your mail in plaintext, and while I can convert to html I generally won't unless the mail is from someone I know fairly well; there are just too many dangers in reading html mail. I can make exceptions where you have done a lot of formatting work with tables and such.

Third: when sending a URL, you may enclose it with <URL> angle marks, but do NOT enclose it with [brackets]. I have to do things to brackets and again, time is the one thing I don't  have a lot of.

Understand: I appreciate the mail I get. I think I have one of the best mail sections on the web, and this is largely due to the thought my readers put into the mail you send. I am very grateful for all the work that is done for me. Alas, there is a LOT of mail, and moving and formatting it is work. Fortunately you can make things easier for me. Thanks!!

============

I HATE THIS

 

I was offered some help on Vista search. I opened the window in Firefox. I had 90 tabs open, and they were open for a reason. (They are all gone now and the only way I can restore them is to open them in the former machine, get their url's, and manually open them here. I hate Firefox. )

When the tab I wanted to look at came up, I was also told to install Flash Player or some such. About halfway through that I got a note that I had to close Firefox before I could add this plugin. I did that. And of course when Firefox was restarted there was one and only one tab, and that was the damned plugin source tab. All 90 of the others are gone, and there seems to be no way to find out what they were. History is no help.

This is pure crap. I have the system set to go back to where it was, but apparently the installation process defeats that. So now I have to open a hundred tabs one at a time.

I hate this. I really really hate this.

===================

Jerry,

 Breaking news, except CNN doesn't seem to be reporting it...

 House Republicans apparently refuse to adjourn with the energy issue unresolved.  Democrats turn off lights and try to kick out the media and public.  How long until the Department of State Security (Achtung!  Papers Please!)  whoops I mean DHS is called in to quell the rebellion?

 <http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0808/
House_Dems_turn_out_out_the_light_but_
GOP_keep_talking.html?showall

 On the good-bad scale of political games, this may on the "good" side.  We see reps from one party departing for vacation or re-election campaign work, the other party saying that one issue is too important to be left unworked.  And the party that is leaving is attempting to forbid the media from reporting what's going on, after having left the nation with a message that any project that takes 10 years to benefit the country at ZERO taxpayer cost should not be pursued or even discussed, because the effects won't be seen during the current election cycle.

Sean

================

Windows Search does come in a 64-bit Vista version; and I think I will install it and see what happens.

=========

I have made a Word document of the URL's of the 90 windows open on the older machine. There is probably a Firefox log function or some way to do that automatically rather than taking half an hour to copy and paste, but I don't know what it is, and this way I have a permanent record.

A decent logging function would be useful, and I bet there is one in Firefox if I knew how to find it.

=======

Thanks to all those who wrote, I know all about Firefox and logging the tabs. Thanks again. No more help needed..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 read book now

Friday   TOP  Current Mail

 

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Saturday,  August 2, 2008

Last night we heard rumors of strange antics in the Capitol: the Democrats had adjourned, but the Republicans wanted to continue to debate oil prices and energy policy. The Democrats were turning off the lights, and expelling reporters attempting to cover these antics.

We watched the new and looked into CSPAN and Fox News, but we found nothing. This morning I Googled Lights Out Capitol and found:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/
0808/House_Dems_turn_out_out_the_light
_but_GOP_keep_talking.html?showall

which seems to be a narrative of the situation.

Now for sheer drama this isn't up to the caning of Republican Senator Charles Sumner by the Democrat Preston Brooks

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/
history/minute/The_Caning_of_
Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm

which was an act of high drama -- Brooks was lauded for his defense of property by his adherents, while Sumner was a hero of the abolitionists -- but it has its moments. Alas, none of this is solving the energy crisis.

While watching the network news we were given hints of what Obama will say today at the Urban League and shown many pictures of Obama. We were also told that McCain addressed the Urban League yesterday, but there was no hint as to what he said. Perhaps I can use Google to find out, but actually I am not all that interested.

One does wonder when McCain will start campaigning against Obama. He's done a fair job of repudiating his supporters.

================

Thanks to all those who sent me various techniques for dealing with the problem of Firefox and logging open tabs. I now know about all that it's possible to know on the subject.

==============

I am now set to go to the DC/X Reunion http://www.dcxproject.com/ and
http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/
events.php?view=detail&event_id=96
and I guess I will have an hour or so to speak on the subject. This could be fun...

=================

It has been a frustrating morning. I keep "finding things to write about" which is to say discovering disasters and finding ways to recover from them. And just as I was doing that the APC UPS in the Great Hall which powers Alexis, my former communications machine, died in the middle of a critical operation. That closed that

 computer without warning, and scared the living goo out of me since I wasn't sure I had everything backed up. Fortunately i have a spare Falcon UPS and I was able to recover from that fairly quickly.

But now my new machine cannot only see 3 systems (including itself) on my network. I don't know if I should reset the new Vista machine, or reset those it can't see. The other Vista machine sees all the old machines so it's not generic to Vista as a problem. There's a "refresh" command in Vista NETWORK but it does nothing. There must be some way to do this. I suppose the first thing I will do is reset this machine and see if that does it.

It's sure frustrating.

====

Well, that was simple. It only required resetting THIS machine. All the networked sites then appeared without problems. I wonder if this is standard with Vista?

Mac OS X has no trouble seeing other web sites, but it takes quite a while to connect to them. With Vista the connection is simple -- provided that you can see the site in the first place!

======

Running a stress test now: I am doing an enormous X Copy from another machine, working here, and letting Outlook do its thing. So far no glitches, no slowdowns, no problems. We are at about 30% CPU usage with about 40% on CPU 1 and as low as 15% on CPU 2, and the others in between. Four cores helps...

Opening Firefox with 22 tabs open has not changed the CPU Usage much.

Outlook is slower, but there is no effect on Word or this window. The halts and hesitations have ended. XCOPY does slow down when there are many other tasks -- but it has not stopped. It speeds up again when Outlook stops looking for mail.

 

=================

I have to do the column. There's a lot to report.  And Weirdness...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday   TOP  Current Mail

 
This week:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

read book now

TOP

Sunday,  August 3, 2008

Happy Birthday, Alex; Happy Anniversary Phillip

Sleepless in Studio City

Hatfill redux?

< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201632_pf.html  >

-- Roland Dobbins

I have wondered about this from the first moments. The only person he is supposed to have had murderous thoughts about is his therapist who is the only one who reports homicidal thoughts to begin with. I won't comment on that. I wonder if this is not yet another attempt to avoid the appearance of profiling?

Of means, motive, and opportunity, we have a questionable motive not confirmed -- speculative, actually; difficult but not impossible means; and perhaps an opportunity, but again more speculative. And so far as we have seen, not one shred of evidence. After Hatfill, one does wonder about the competence and motives of the investigation team.

I grew up thinking the FBI was nearly infallible. I once wrote an essay about how the US was one of the few countries that admired and approved of its secret police. Of course I was 14 years old at the time.

Now I will try to sleep again.

===============

0900

Every time I think I have solved all the problems with Office 2007 and Vista I get another whap in the head. Microsoft has changed the way things work in a dozen small ways, none of them obvious improvements. To change the viewing panel from html to plain text used to be part of the mail format command set, which seems reasonable. No longer. Now it's in security. But the word wrap length is in a different place, and doesn't matter anyway. Things were arbitrarily changed to make things more difficult for the experienced user without conferring any real advantage to the newcomer.

I am halfway tempted to scrub the whole mess, install Office 2003 and XP, and go back to what I had but on a faster machine. Not yet, of course. I'll keep trying. Maybe I can get used to it. They say you can get used to hanging if you hang long enough.

=============

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, RIP.

<http://www.iht.com/

--- Roland Dobbins

A giant has left us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 read book now

 Sunday   TOP        Current View  

 Current Mail

This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the weekly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 8,000 - 12,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If  you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here. This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.

If you have no idea what you are doing here, see  the What is this place?, which tries to make order of chaos. 

Boiler Plate:

If you want to PAY FOR THIS, the site is run like public radio: you don't have to pay, but if no one does, it will go away. On how to pay, I keep the latest HERE.  MY THANKS to all of you who have sent money.  Some of you went to a lot of trouble to send money from overseas. Thank you! There are also some new payment methods.

If you subscribed:

atom.gif (1053 bytes) CLICK HERE for a Special Request.

If you didn't and haven't, why not?

If this seems a lot about paying think of it as the Subscription Drive Nag. You'll see more.

If you are not paying for this place, click here...

For information on COURSE materials, click here

 

Strategy of Technology in pdf format:

For platinum subscription:

For a PDF copy of A Step Farther Out:

 

 

For the BYTE story, click here.

 

Search: type in string and press return.

For Current Mail click here.

 The freefind search remains:

 

   Search this site or the web        powered by FreeFind
 
  Site search Web search

Here is where to order the nose pump I recommend:

 

 

Entire Site Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by Jerry E. Pournelle. All rights reserved.

 

birdline.gif (1428 bytes)