News and Views

Devon’s company SECo has just closed their Pasadena office and everyone was laid off. It looks like they are going to file for bankruptcy.

He doesn’t know what he is going to do yet, but he’ll figure something out. He was only planning to work for a year before going on to graduate school anyway, so it’s not a career-changer, but it is still unplanned for and unexpected.

If he finds another job in another state he will have to break a lease, which may cost some money.

Looks like he’s getting a dose of real life.

I’m flying to Pasadena this afternoon to spend the weekend with Devon. Back home on Sunday afternoon.

Derek is feeling much better 2 weeks after the second epidural. Not quite perfect, but he plans to talk to the doctor before deciding whether he needs a third shot or not.

Derek is doing well at ASU, acing his tests. Looks like he’s going to do well.

Devon broke up from his girlfriend of 5+ years (Keri). Amicable, but still hard to take after so long.

Devon is still working for SECO (Sub-Surface Exploration Company) as a geophysicist in Pasadena. Still planning to go to grad school next fall.

Gisele spent last week in Pasadena with Devon — at least she spent the nights at his apartment. She has so many old friends living in the area that she was out everyday having fun.

I “fixed” the crashed Vondek server last week, but otherwise not much is going on with me. (OK, “fixed” is maybe misleading, but I helped…)

Apollo is enjoying the cooler weather, spending most of the days outside. He runs a little farther almost every day beside the bike. He sprints about a half-mile when we start now, then trots for about 2, periodically breaking back into a lope. He would be willing to trot much further if he could find someone to ride the bike longer.

Derek went in for his second epidural this afternoon. The doctor used a little more local anaesthetic, and Derek said it was much less painful.

There was not much (if any) improvement in his back pain after the first shot two weeks ago, but the Doctor said this shot was a different steroid that works in conjunction with the first shot. He said it would take about 10 days to feel an improvement, but he sounded optimistic that it would definitely help.

I finally decided to give Linux a try. I took an old computer and installed Linux on it (Ubuntu 7.04 if you’re curious), then added a “KVM Switch” so I could share my single monitor, keyboard and mouse between that computer and my existing Windows 2000 computer.

Without going into a lot of detail, I can say that it is a qualified success. I find myself using it for most of my daily web browsing and email, word processing, etc. Most of the things I usually use Windows for I can do just as easily in Linux.

The success is qualified because there are still a couple of programs I can’t find good replacements for. One of them is my PHP coding program that has a built-in FTP client. I haven’t found anything as good in Linux yet, though it probably exists. It’s probably not fair to Linux that I haven’t immediately found suitable replacements for programs that I have accumulated over years.

The other major thing is that I occasionally write programs for Windows users, and those have to be compiled on a Windows machine.

Otherwise, I think most people could switch to Linux as easily as they could to an Apple. In fact, I’m sure there is lots more software available for Linux than for Apples. Apples may be slightly more user friendly, but the Ubuntu version of Linux is pretty darn good. I don’t think it’s less friendly than Windows, just different.

And I don’t have to worry about picking up a virus by going to the wrong website. Viruses (Viri?) are rare in the Linux world.

Anyway, I’m going to keep using Linux, for now, but I will also have to keep my other computer available, for now.

Not me — Derek.

He’s been complaining about lower back pain for a while now, and finally it got bad enough that he went to see the doctor. An MRI shows that he has a prolapsed disc in his lower back.

You can see the prolapsed disk below the center of the picture, where the spinal cord is obscured.

He has an appointment next Monday for an epidural, a mixture of anaesthetic and steroids that sometimes help this kind of problem. If that doesn’t help, we’ll have to take it from there. Maybe he should get a rolling backpack to take his books to school. They’re not cool, but might be worthwhile…

Richard, it seems more reasonable to have back problems at 60, but he seems awfully young at 19. Hopefully his age will mean a quick recovery.

Derek starts at ASU tomorrow (Monday). I think his declared major is Pre-Med.

I have had my HP Deskjet 890 for almost 10 years. I’m not exactly sure when I bought it, but the date of manufacture is 08/1997. Local stores no longer sell cartridges for it and refilling only works about half the time. It’s been a workhorse for me, but I decided it was finally time to get with the civilized world.

I bought an HP 2605dn from Costco, for less money than my old inkjet cost 10 years ago.

The color is astonishingly good. The usual consensus is that color laser printers don’t print color graphics, especially photos, as well as inkjet printers do. I think this one is an exception. Even on plain paper, photos have saturated colors, and a glossy finish. It’s definitely better than my old (10 years old!) inkjet. I’m sure modern inkjets are better, but it’s still very good.

This modern, capitalistic world! We thrive on new toys.

A few weeks ago I tried to take Apollo for a run on my bicycle. I had one hand holding the leash, and the other on the handlebars.

Everything went fine until he saw a cat (or dog, or bird — I never knew what it was for sure). He took off running, pulling me off flat onto the pavement. I held on, but paid for it with a skinned knee, elbow, shoulder and hands. It could have been worse, as my helmet bonked hard against the pavement, but the helmet absorbed the shock and my head wasn’t hurt at all.

That ended the bike-with-leash-in-hand experiment.

So I did some research on the web, and discovered “The Springer“. It’s an attachment that bolts on to the bicycle frame just below the seat. The dog is harnessed to this through a strong spring.

The attachment below the center of mass of the bike-and-rider, and the spring to absorb shocks, gives the rider complete control. I was quite surprised, but even if Apollo sees a dog or cat and lunges towards it, it’s just a gentle pull on the bike that I can easily control. The assembly just next to the pedal means that he can’t bump into my foot. He learned quickly to cooperate with me, and loves to go for a run.

Watch the Springer promotional video. The first part is exactly what happened to me when I was trying to hold the leash in my hand. The next part, where the German Shepard is lunging away from the calmly riding bike rider is accurate too.

Warning: This is a fairly technical discussion that will probably not be of interest to Mom.

A few times lately I have struggled with people’s computers trying to find out why they are running so sluggishly. When no programs are running, Task Manager shows the CPU usage at 50% – 80%, though the process list doesn’t show anything using any of that processing power. Normally, CPU usage should be between 0% and maybe 4% when idle (at the bottom of the Task Manager window.) I thought at first that there must be a hidden virus, or rootkit running in the background. But I was wrong.

What happens is that the hard drive is not being accessed in fast DMA mode, but rather in a much slower PIO mode. Windows monitors hard drive errors, and when they reach a certain level it assumes that the drive can’t handle DMA and switches it to PIO. Usually the hard drive can still run in DMA just fine.

Check it out in Device Manager. Look under “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” at the “Primary IDE Channel”. In Properties, on the Advanced Settings tab, “Current Transfer Mode” should be “Ultra DMA Mode” or something that has the word “DMA” in it.

If it has fallen back to PIO, the solution is to uninstall the Primary IDE Channel in Device Manager, then reboot. The system may require a second reboot, but in the end it will reinstall the controller, usually back in DMA mode. It will make a huge difference in your performance.