Author Archives: Pat

New Flooring

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Operation Replace The Carpet has started. I just finished placing an order to get slate tile and laminate flooring installed in three rooms downstairs. The dining room and library are getting laminates and the wierd room (I really don’t know what to call it) is going to have the slate tiles installed. The closet under the stairs is getting some extremely cheap laminate just to finish it out.

This is the first step in a project to get rid of all of the wall-to-wall carpet in the house. With my allergies it’s just not a good idea to have something on the floors whose only job is to trap everything I’m allergic to.

Pascha Rewrite Complete

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I finished it tonight, after spending an hour bumming some code, getting rid of extra variables, and generally cleaning things up. I’ve updated the record at PalmGear.com and it’s ready to be downloaded.

The new app takes up 8k on the handheld and runs just as smoothly as before. The only problem is that the database I use to store the prefs in has changed format when I switched from NSBasic to C so the old version must be uninstalled before installint this one or else it’ll crash and force you to do a soft reset.

Dead Witch Walking

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I finished Dead Witch Walking tonight. It was a really good read, kind of a supernatural detective genre, similar to the Jim Butcher’s work.

The premise is that a genetically engineered virus wiped out a bunch of humanity but didn’t touch any of the paranormal races (except the elves) and now they’ve come out of hiding. Rachel Morgan is a witch striking out on her own as a detective. Even if her former bosses want to kill her for it.

The End Of NTC/410

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NTC/410 came to an end tonight and I’m glad it did. This was probably the roughest class I’ve taken so far, and not because the material was all that difficult. I learned a lot about networking and telecommunications, which has been my weakest area in IT. It’s just that our team had some real problems, two people were unavailable when they were needed due to illness, and that really hurt. But it’s done and I’ve got a couple weeks off to recover. I’m starting my next class, Intro to UNIX, after I get back from Finland.

The Drama Of The Vet Visit

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I had to take the girls to the vet (The Cat Hospital of Las Colinas) for their annual checkup. Poor Freya just couldn’t handle seeing the carrier and urinated on the floor out of fear. I got that cleaned up and her loaded in her carrier without any more trouble. But then it was Luna’s turn. She did alright, but shredded my shirt because she decided that she didn’t want to be carried. After getting both of them loaded in the Jeep we went in to the vet. Five minutes from the office Freya defecated and threw up in her carrier. That’s a combination of odors that I recommend everyone experience.

Other than that the visit was uneventful. They’re healthy and up to date on their shots, though they’re a little overweight, so we’ve put them on diet food. They really don’t like it, but they’re going to have to get used to it because they really do need to lose some weight.

They’re both happy to be home and I’m hoping they’ll forgive me some time before I have to do this again.

PalmOS Developer Suite

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After a long time off from developing palm applications, I found out that PalmSource has released an PalmOS IDE they’re calling the PalmOS Developer Suite. It’s based off the Eclipse IDE and it kicks some serious butt.

A little history is probably in order. My first job out of college was writing and maintaining X11 GUIs and UNIX applications using C and perl. While in college I paid the bills by writing Visual Basic applications. I’ve been writing code for a while, but I’d gotten pretty burned out and took some time (a few years) off. Then I found NS Basic and started writing PalmOS applications. I like NS Basic and really think it’s a good development environment, but it’s sadly lacking in that it can’t produce native code applications. Everything’s interpreted, so you’ve got to package a 100 kilobyte runtime with your app. Talk about bloat!

Back in April, 2004 I released my first real app, a small utility to calculate the date of Pascha and the other feasts and fasts that are related to it. Unfortunately it used up 119 kilobytes of memory.

I’ve now got the new IDE up and running and am working on rewriting the Paschal calculator in C. It’ll take up a lot less space and should run just a little faster, though it’s not a computationally intensive application so that may not matter much.

The Road Test

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I rode the bike in to work today, the first real test after all of the repairs, and I’m just so pleased with the results. I’ve got my bike back. It started without the enricher even though it was cool out, it warmed up quickly, and ran with minimal problems. Acceleration was definitely there, and when I pulled in to the office 20 miles later the bottom of the carb was still bone dry.

Youth

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I just picked up Collective Soul‘s latest release, Youth and really like it. It’s got a pretty similar sound to their last release, Blender, but there are noticable differences. All in all it’s a good album, and I’m really hoping they go on tour some time soon and pass through Dallas.

No More Gas Leak

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This morning was the last attempt to cure my persistent carburator problems. I’ve been having a real problem with gas leaking out of the float bowl for the last few months. So I replaced the float bowl gasket (HD Part# 27577-92), an o-ring in the accelerator pump (HD Part# 27360-76), and the fuel inlet valve (HD Part# 27886-78A) this morning. After buttoning up everything, I fired it up, got the idle speed set right once it was warmed back up, and took it for a good long putt. The end result is that there’s no more fuel leaking out of the carb. It’s finally fixed so now I can get back on two wheels and start saving some money on gas again!

The Course of Empire

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I finished reading The Course of Empire tonight. It’s a collaboration between Eric Flint and K. D. Wentworth, two authors whose solo projects I have enjoyed immensely.

Humanity has been conquered by the Jao, but the conquest hasn’t gone all that well, and the Jao’s enemies are on the way to wipe out humanity in an ancient war. It’s a very well written book, with believable characterizations, good plots, and pretty much everything else I’ve come to enjoy from both of those authors.