Chicken house update
Here’s a picture of me (with a stupid grin) putting up chicken wire.
Perhaps 1/2 the chicken wire is up at this point.
Chicken house started
I built the base for the chicken house/tractor tonight. It was a good feeling, to translate the image in my brain of what it *should* look like into a physical object. The next step will be to set up the hoops that will hold up the roof.
Finally fixed “about this mac”
My hackintosh’s one lasting failing was that it’s “about this mac” dialog has never worked. Worse, clicking the menu item to view the dialog would crash finder, dump me to a blue screen, then restart finder.
Finally, I ran across this forum thread where the poster Rushabh suggests disabling quick boot in bios.
I did this one my UD3P’s bios, and voila! I have an about this mac dialog! Silly as it seems, this is important for some apps because they base their settings off what’s read in that dialog.
Storm watcher
The skies overhead tonight were clear. Mel and I sat on the back porch and watch a line of storms that filled the horizon to the northwest. We thought it was odd that we couldn’t hear any thunder, since the thunderheads were full of nearly constant lightening. We could feel the rumbling slightly in our bones, but no sound. When we got inside, Mel checked where the storm is on weather radar. It is 80 miles away!
I had no idea it was possible to see anything 80 miles away in Indiana. (:
Soluto
I got a beta invite for Soluto today. Soluto is a tool for improving the boot times of Windows-based computers. It examines your bootup, then tells you what you can remove from your boot, what you can delay, etc. The best part of the tool is that there is a wiki on the back end that allows for discussion of the various processes that you’re making decisions about. That means that (hopefully) you’ll have some up to date and relevant info on each process, rather than having to google each one.
I installed it on my work machine. Even with an SSD, it was taking 2 minutes and 30 seconds to boot. After just five minutes with Soluto, I was able to bring that down to 1:30, shaving off an entire minute. It’s quite a beautiful tool as well. I’ll have to post a screenshot later, if I can find some time.
My only concern with the tool is the amount of access that it has. Since it has direct access into boot areas of the OS, it pretty much has free reign of your system. It could (and does) collect stats about who runs what at startup. I’m worried that the community aspect of it could be astroturfed into making people believe that malware was useful. I’m also worried that it could be used as an infection vector.
First night of work on retaining wall
Here’s what I worked on after work tonight. It is the start of a retaining wall for the front of the house. I am hoping to finish a little each night that the weather is good enough (and that I am home).
Dave’s Green Tip #1
Money saving tip: pee in the bathroom sink. Then wash your hands. You just saved somewhere between 1/3 and 1 gallon of water by not flushing your toilet. You were going to wash you hands afterwards anyway, right?
Note: not recommended for women, men with bad aim or men who are not taller than their bathroom sink. Also not recommended for public spaces, unless it’s a public space occupied largely by Hippies.
OS X update 10.6.3
The hackintosh tells me that 10.6.3 is available for download. Going to let it install overnight. Hope I still have a working hack in the morning. (:
update 30Mar2010: The 10.6.3 update didn’t finish last night, but several other updates did. Also, found a kext that finally fixed my “About this Mac” problem. It works now!! w00t. Trying the 10.6.3 update again tonight.
Longing for home
As a Christian, my worldview is that the entire universe is under the effects of sin. The whole damn thing is wearing out and dying. Nothing works exactly as designed. The entire creation is still an amazing thing, even in this state. The beautiful things of this world really drive home for me what a wonderful thing the redeemed world will be.
Those “zen” moments, when the perfect song comes on while I’m *understanding* a piece of code. When a perfect, clean fix implements just the way I wanted it to. When people truly, selflessly work together for the common good (I’ve never seen this, but I’ve seen shades of it). When multiple cars come up to an intersection from opposite directions and all make balanced (if the roads were a see-saw, they would be flat before and after the cars turn, because of the “weight” on the roads) similar turns. When my daughter has a smile on her face and runs to meet me, so full of joy, after a long day of work. When my wife, in her knowing way, smiles at me (weapon in hand) when I enter the door.
All of these things, each in its own way, serves to cause me to simultaneously praise the Creator of an orderly, beautiful creation (that can shine even behind the patina of sin) and long for the day when the entire thing is redeemed to His Glory.
“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
OS X and wallpaper
This is a really trivial thing, but it’s so nice! You can separately set the image, scaling, rotation etc for the wallpaper on each monitor in a multi-monitor setup. I’m cheap, so my monitors are different aspect rations. The main monitor is a fairly nice widescreen LCD. The secondary monitor is a 4:3 CRT. This means that wallpapers need to be setup differently to look nice on the two screens.
Yes, I realize this is super trivial. Most of the time, I can’t even see my wallpaper. Regardless, it’s nice when things work so nicely. No more stitching images together in MS Paint!