Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Last Friday night, I was watching The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, and at the end of the show was a lovely singer/songwriter named Diane Birch. Her style reminded me of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Phoebe Snow -- singer/songwriters from the early '70s. She was playing a white Rhodes Mark 7 electric piano. (I've always loved the sound of the Rhodes; we had one in our high school jazz ensemble.) The song she sang grew on me.

Watch and listen to the video.

I think I'm going to make a run to Borders RSN to purchase her CD, "Bible Belt".

In the last couple of days since my last post on the topic, I found out that ACM, IEEE, and the IEEE Computer Society all have digital libraries online.....for members only or for a monthly or annual fee. I believe their libraries contain all their back issues. I'm sure of this for ACM; I'm not so sure for IEEE. (Links included mostly for my reference.)

Communications of the ACM
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE-CS Computer

Another reason for me to ditch the paper versions of the magazines, which mostly consist of technical research papers. Most of these papers won't be read, used, or needed by me.

Has it strictly been my experience that employers don't support employees' activity in professional organizations? In all the companies I've worked for, they've been neutral to indifferent about my membership in such organizations. That's another reason why I let my memberships lapse.

The cats woke me up this morning, as they often do. I may go back to bed later, but for now, I'm up.

While I was going through the stuff I have in the basement of my mom's house, I came across two boxes of magazines. One was filled with issues of Communications of the ACM from 1983-89, and the other had issues of the IEEE Spectrum and Computer magazines from 1985-86. These are publications from technical/professional societies I belonged to at the time. My professors saved their old issues, as they had them displayed in their offices. And so I thought, why shouldn't I?

Somewhere, in a corner of my garage, I think I have a box or two of issues of Communications of the ACM from 1989-1999, when I chose not to renew my membership with ACM. I felt that I was paying for a magazine that I wasn't reading, and at the time, the society's news and activities were not relevant to what I was working on at the time.

I'd hate to throw out these old magazines. As with most of my paper output, I'd rather recycle them. But I think they'd be useful to someone. So I've been hanging on to them, hoping for a worthy recipient. I thought about local college and university libraries, but they probably already have the issues. Does anyone have any other ideas?

I'm keeping the issue that has Donald Knuth's "The Telnet Song", and the issue that Cliff Stoll signed for me. But everything else can go. And I'm keeping all the SIGGRAPH stuff because I think they're way cool.

While I'm here with my mom, I figured I might as well go through some file boxes, and binders full of printouts I haven't looked at since college. I found some things that I've been missing for years. I found my Peanuts Book of Pumpkin Carols, which was filed under old greeting cards. I got rid of my old ACM, IEEE, and DECUS correspondence, flyers, and newsletters.

I also went through a couple of boxes labeled "Misc. Stuff", and found a reel of tape with my electronic music class project, "Inside the Mentat's Mind". Now to find a reel-to-reel tape player so I can convert it to cassette, CD, or MP3 file.

Most of the paper files that I no longer need have been taken to a local dumpster for recycling. (I didn't take the pile of SF con flyers printed on colored paper.)

Now that this box has been gone through, I'm ready to go to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner with her family.

On a lark, I started searching YouTube for songs I haven't heard in years. Some songs I have in my collection, in various formats (vinyl, cassette, CD). And a few I don't have in any form except brain memory. Lo and behold, YouTube continues to deliver. I'm slowly building a playlist on YouTube containing these hits. I may split this off into several playlists over time. Right now the playlist has 17 songs and counting.

Looking at this playlist, I'm realizing that there is a significant number of songs by Canadian artists which didn't -- and still don't -- get a lot of airplay south of the US/Canadian border. Jane Siberry, Triumph, Saga, Gowan, Kim Mitchell, The Box. I was blessed to have grown up in a border town and be exposed to a wide variety of music. That's another thing I miss about Buffalo.

I'd like to challenge the local "we play anything" station to play some songs by these artists.

I'm looking for a software inventory and/or audit program that will go through my system(s) and produce a report of my installed software. Specifically, I'm looking for the name of software that's installed, the version number, the install date, and the installation location. Even though I try to be diligent with recording my software installs, I may miss tracking a few entries. Any suggestions?

I've been doing a fair amount of Linux work in the past few days, both at home and at a volunteer organization I belong to.

As some of you may already know, version 9.10 of Ubuntu Linux -- codenamed "Karmic Koala" -- was released to the public last week. I installed it on my desktop. This system can now dual-boot Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu Linux, just like my laptop.

( What apps run under Linux? )

I would say a good 75% of what I regularly do can be done using Ubuntu Linux and a few apps: Firefox, Thunderbird, a text editor, and OpenOffice.

Not much has been said in my LJ recently. Had a lot of short mini-blog entries in my Facebook. That's how I'll divide my posts in the future --short items go into FB; longer items go into LJ.

Anyway.....the good news is that I finally got DSL yesterday. The bad news is that I had to give up my Cincinnati Bell local and long distance service -- and my fuse.net email account -- and switch them over to AT&T in order for me to get DSL from AT&T. And part of the "fun" was running the gauntlet of customer support from both companies.

Been spending lots of time futzing away at the computers. I did lots of software updating yesterday. And I downloaded Ubuntu 9.10, which just came out. Anyone want/need a copy burned on CD?

I also discovered a problem with my laptop. It's getting a memory error and reducing the amount of usable memory from 512 Mb to 256 Mb, slowing down the system. The memory checks out fine per the Memtest86+ test. I think a socket needs repairing.

This morning, I took down the shower curtain, unplugged the TV, and deflated the air mattress. Loaded the last carload of my belongings into the car. I had breakfast, and then went to the rental office to drop off my keys. The utilities have already been scheduled to be turned off on Fri 10/30, and I already have a change-of-address form filled out.

Some good news: The leasing agent told me they already have someone lined up to move in in the middle of next month, so I'll only have to pay the first two weeks of November.

And so my Cleveland adventure is over. I'm going to miss Parma, and the Cleveland area. It was starting to feel like home to me.

Now that most of my things have been moved out of the apartment -- with the rest of the stuff coming back with me on Friday -- it's time to think about what I'm going to miss about Cleveland. In no particular order:
1) Being close to Lake Erie, regardless of the season
2) Tucky's Hot Dogs (say hi to Mark at the Mayfield store for me)
3) IHOP (we don't have one in Dayton, alas)
4) Stadium mustard (the closest thing I could find to Cleveland cuisine)
5) Cuyahoga Valley National Park
6) The closeout deals at Marc's
7) The Beer Engine in Lakewood
8) My co-workers at AG Interactive (YAWP!)
9) Being a 4 hour drive away from my mom and friends in Buffalo
10) My New Warrior brothers in the Cleveland/Akron area
11) Driving down Big Creek Parkway in Parma