Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Last month, I was asked to sign -- and signed -- a petition to allow voters to choose to put a casino in the state of Ohio, in Clinton County. The proponents have been on local talk radio, and have also put up a website: myohionow.com.

I probably won't ever go to the place -- I know enough about game theory that the house always wins -- but I'm not gonna stop other people from gambling away their money. Besides, people from Ohio are already going across state lines to Indiana to gamble. Let's keep the money in the state.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday shining_woman!

I'm posting this from the new laptop, on which I installed Ubuntu Linux 7.10. I still haven't figured out how to get the PCMCIA modem to work. But they were throwing out a USRobotics Sportster 33.6 FAxmodem at work. And so I thought about using it for the interim. A little twiddling with wvdial, and editing the configuration file, and I'm online.

Now to go to my favorite wi-fi hangout and test the network card.

This is when March Madness begins. The conference tournaments for men's and women's college basketball. My alma mater is the #12 seed in the MAC tournament; they play #5 Miami. One of my co-workers is a UD (Univ. of Dayton) fan, who just won in overtime against St. Louis. He has his radio tuned in so all of us can hear the game, whether we like it or not.

This is about the only time in the year I pay attention to basketball, either college or professional. I stopped following basketball when John Y. Brown moved the Braves out of Buffalo, brought them to San Diego, and renamed them the Clippers. (They've since moved up the coast to Los Angeles.)

Today's shout-outs: Happy belated birthday almeda! Sorry I missed it earlier.

Some time ago, I mentioned that I had dibs on an old Pentium III laptop at work. Earlier this week, we cleaned out two cubicles in preparation for new employees, and a lot of old and unused computer things were thrown out. One of the "things" was an old Gateway E4000 desktop, which I was using until last year, when the hard drive started to fail on it. I managed to vulch that machine, along with some mice, a power cord, a modem, and some phone and network cables. And Jeanne (our admin assistant) said that I could have the laptop.

And so, I took it home on Thursday night.

While cleaning out the carrying case, I came across a copy of Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Service Pack 5, and some old manuals. But that's not what I'm going to install on the laptop. Once I get a hard drive for it, I'm installing Ubuntu 7.10. I've already ran it from the laptop's CD-ROM, and it appears to work nicely. Especially the games. I'll just need to know how to install new hardware, when it comes time to do so -- floppy drive module, modem, network card, wireless network card, USB devices, etc.

For the Linux geeks out there -- and I really should make a filter -- how easy or difficult would it be to install these devices? I'm not expecting plug-and-play, which is one of Windows' main selling points (ease of use). Are drivers available?

Oh yeah. If you want to be included in my Linux filter, post a reply to this message. I'm already planning to include autographedcat, bikergeek, and urban_terrorist.

It's Friday. I should be happy. But I'm not. I'm feeling rather grumpy.

The winter storm that the weather forecasters warned us about last night came in this morning, just as I was getting ready to leave home. I-675 was a mess; I don't think I did above 40 mph while on it. Someone hit a light pole at the Indian Ripple Rd. exit. But I made it into work.

I got my tax refund today, but I can't transfer any of it to my savings account because my savings account was closed for inactivity yesterday. In an effort to reopen the account, I called the bank's help line, and they told me I need to take care of that at a local branch. (Well, if their interest really was in me, they'd take care of my every little request, and not try to gouge or inconvenience me. Hurm.)

Today, my life is like watching a bad movie, and I want to shut it off and take it back to where I got it. Hopefully this day will go a little better after lunch.

Some time ago, my ISP (Siscom) moved my web pages and the server they were on in an effort to phase out the domain name of my previous ISP (DNACo), which my current ISP acquired. I did not receive advance notice of this change.

I am now considering changing my ISP. My account expires in June, unless I renew for another 6 months.

I'm considering fuse.net (Cincinnati Bell) and GMail as my ISP and/or email provider. Can anyone give me good and/or bad about either of these services?

Shout-outs: Happy birthday celticferret!

What I should be doing today is to continue to clean up and declutter the condo. But I just don't feel like doing it.

I'd like to rearrange the desk by moving it 90 degrees so that it adjoins my computer area. Right now, they're against the same wall.

Or I can go into the storage unit and pull out a box of computer printouts I haven't seen since, oh, around 1986.

Or I can just spend the day doing nothing. It's not easy doing nothing. You never know when you're finished.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday filkerdave!

Every so often, the urinal in the mens' room on my floor doesn't shut itself off. The valve sticks and it goes into continuous flush mode. Thankfully, it doesn't overspill the urinal and flood the restroom. But it sure is annyoing when it happens. I think it happs to me rather frequently, even though I pull up on the lever instead of pushing down on it. Usually I have to snap the flush lever so that whatever inside is sticking goes back into place. Yesterday, I discovered a new way of shutting it off: flushing the toilet in the next stall.

Speaking of water....I can definitely spend some time in a hot tub right about now.

Despite having nearly 6 quarts of leftover lentil soup, I would say that the "Men Who Cook" event was a huge success. When we repeat this next year, I think we should lower our target amounts to serve half the attendees. (50 tickets were sold, and we were tasked to make enough for 40-50 people.)

Each of the three batches turned out well. What I did differently this time -- as opposed to the last time I made this recipe three weeks ago -- was to skip the sautéing of the onions and celery, cook the soup at high heat for 8 hours, use 1 can vegetable broth in place of 1 pt water, and add spices like coriander and cumin. (Note to self: Ground coriander and dried cilantro leaves are not interchangeable.)

Needless to say, I won't be making lentil soup for a while. And I'll be looking for room in my freezer, or people to help me eat up the soup.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday redaxe!

....which is what one of my former co-workers called it.

I signed up for my church's first annual "Men Who Cook" night. I'm making three batches of lentil soup, enough to serve 40-50 people (in small servings). Batch #1 is in the slow cooker right now. I'm using Alton Brown's recipe, omitting the step where I sauté the onions and celery in olive oil. (Plus I couldn't find grains of paradise.) Batch #2 will be made tonight, and batch #3 will be made tomorrow morning. The batches will be put into Ziploc bags and (hopefully) hermetically sealed for later consumption.

We got nastybad weather here in these parts today. I thought I'd be slip-sliding away on I-675, but the ODOT crews did a decent job of grooming the road. These are the days I wish I had the capability to work at home. (To do that would require a more powerful computer and high-speed internet, neither of which I can afford right now.)