Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Carik's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
9:37 am	Well, THAT will make my job easier... From the OIT UMail web site: "The UMail service interruption for users whose account names begin with A, B, C, and D has been extended indefinitely due to technical difficulties encountered during todays scheduled maintenance. Other user groups are unaffected and are now online." Naturally, my user-id starts with an A. I called the help desk, and they weren't actually sure what's happening to incoming email -- it may be stored, it may be bounced, or it may be silently deleted. I'd really like to know what they did to their servers.... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 8th, 2007
9:44 am	Condos for sale OK... this is a long shot, but I figured I'd let you all know. My family is about to have two condominium units on the market: If you, or anyone you know, is interested in either of these, please get in touch with me. 1) 1 Watermill Place, Unit 522, Arlington MA I lived in this one for a few years. It's a small unit -- 1 bedroom, 1.5 bath, living/dining room, and a smallish kitchen -- but it's well laid out, and the location is great. It's about a block from a bus stop in Arlington Heights, and there's a locked gate entrance from the parking lot to the Minuteman Bike Path. It includes one parking space, I think, which is covered but not enclosed (this may have changed since I lived there). I don't know what the condo association dues are, but I can find out. My parents are selling it, and asking $235,600. This will go up to $248,000 if they don't get an offer before they try to market it through a realtor. Also, it's currently rented out, and won't be vacant until after September 1. 2) 370F Montague Rd, Sunderland MA I live in this one now. Most of the major problems have been resolved, but anyone who buys the place should be aware that the condo association is self-managed, and they'll need to put in some work to keep it up to date. The septic system, except for the holding tank, was replaced in May, 2006, and is working well. The clean water holding tank needs to be inspected, which I'm working on arranging now, but is expected to pass. Assuming that hasn't been done before closing, I'll put money in escrow to pay for the current worst case prediction, so it shouldn't cost the new owners anything out of pocket. The unit has a recently remodeled kitchen and bath. It's listed as about 950 square feet, with 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, living room, dining room, and kitchen. The living room has sliding glass doors that lead to a patio, and give a view of a pond (we had a kingfisher and a heron last year, although I haven't seen them this year. I have seen turtles, goldfish, and ducks this summer.) and part of Mt. Toby. There are walking trails easily accessible, leading to the top of Mt Toby, some caves, and the remains of an old sugar shack. I replaced the glass in the sliders last summer, and installed a storm door on the front door last fall, which reduced our energy costs some. Heat is electric. Water and hot water are provided by the Association; dues are $200 per month. I'm asking $96,500 now, which will increase if I go to a realtor. For comparison, another unit in the building which is slightly smaller and does not have an updated bath or kitchen sold last December for $95,000. I hope to be able to vacate by early August, though it will depend partly on the closing date for my new place. If there's a date you have to move by, I'm happy to negotiate. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
3:37 pm	Bored. I'm not sure I've ever been quite this bored at work. See, the problem isn't that there's nothing to do. The problem is my boss won't let me do the things that need doing. Why not? Because she hasn't read the documentation yet. OK, backing up. I've been working on setting up a way to block SSH attacks on our servers for a week or so now. Shortly after I started, I sent out an email with details on what needed to be done, and why. Since then, I've been doing testing on a server that no one actually uses, and clarifying exactly what we need to do to stop the attacks while allowing legitimate traffic through, and I've got it tuned well enough for our purposes. Thing is, that was Monday. I found out yesterday that the reason I haven't gotten approval to put the firewall update on our main servers is that my boss didn't realize there were attachments on the email I sent out last week. There were four. They were listed and commented on in the email. So now I'm stuck here waiting for her to read the docs, which she may never do. I hate bureaucracy. Current Mood: cranky (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007
10:47 am	Water hates me. I'm visiting my folks for a while (I'm here until tomorrow), and the water main just broke down the street. We have no water until it's repaired, and we don't know when that will be. This is starting to sound really familiar... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 6th, 2006
9:47 pm	Music! I'm pretty sure I've mentioned them before, but 35th Parallel are really quite good... I'm listening to their newest download of the month (a free track off their website that for whatever reason isn't going to make it onto an album), and it's kind of neat. Go check them out, and go see them in concert sometime, if you have the chance. Current Music: 35th Parallel, "Improv with Mark Rhodes" (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
11:07 am	VOIP! Since I almost never post about the good (or at least interesting) parts of my job.... I just got to spend the morning playing with Skype. For those of you who don't know, it's a voice over IP (VOIP) application that basically lets you make phone calls over the internet. If you're calling someone else who has skype, it's free, if you're calling a landline or cell, it costs. But I'd never actually sat down to work with it before, and it's kind of interesting. See, one of our professors is collaborating with some folks in Australia. Between long-distance charges and the fees OIT (the University-wide IT group) charge for teleconference equipment, she'd spent about $1,000 in the last year or so. So someone mentioned Skype to her, and she wanted to try it. It's pretty neat... and, of course, in order to test it on her computer, she had to have a computer to call, so I set it up on my computer as well. I'm not sure whether I'll leave it installed, but I might. It'll depend a lot on who else that I know has it. For instance, if I can use it to call my sister, it'd be much more worth having. So, in any case, it looks like it'll probably work for the prof. in question, so I've probably just saved her quite a bit of money. Also, she might be able to start doing videoconferencing with the group in Australia, which is something she hadn't had the option to do before. So, I at least accomplished something useful today. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
9:24 am	Birthdays! Happy birthday to farwing and catharine! Hope your day goes well! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
9:47 am	Voting? I generally try to avoid the completely political here, but I thought this was an interesting article. Basically, it's a commentary on the problems with computerized voting machines, with some interesting pieces that I hadn't heard before. It's a little long, but it's an interesting read. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 29th, 2006
11:57 am	Eeep! I finally found the piece of Macintosh history I've been looking for: The Wild Eep. I just found an archive of old mac sounds (2 Comments |Comment on this)
11:39 am	Huh? There is something really, really wrong with Microsoft Update today. I've installed the same update (KB832483) four times through the automatic update system, and I'm on install number three through the manual update system. All on the same computer, of course. I can only assume that either: a) The installer is broken, and not actually installing it, b) MicroSoft is broken, and forgot to put the "only install this once" flag in the package, or c) It's a super-stealthy ninja upgrade, and the update system can't find it once it's been installed. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 25th, 2006
4:46 pm	Pedlar's End, and cedar. Well... I just wrote about the whole thing here, so I'm not going to repeat everything. Suffice to say, Pedlar's End is now one step further from falling down. This makes me happy. Current Music: Sarah Brightman, "Scarborough Fair" (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
2:56 pm	DBAN No matter how many times I've checked to confirm I'm erasing the correct disk, starting up a disk wiper like DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) always makes me nervous. Now, I just have to wait a long time for it to finish... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006
10:54 am	Thoughts on classes As you might or might not know, I'm currently working full time and also taking classes. It's both easier and harder than being a full time student. Easier, because classes are sort of a sideline to what I mostly do, which makes it easier for me to deal with them. Harder, because it means I have that much more to do: on top of the usual classwork, I have my job. This semester, I'm enrolled in two classes. The first, which I'm taking because it sounds interesting, is "Intro to Wood Science," which is taught by a guy named Bruce Hoadley, who, I'm told, literally wrote the book on wood identification. (Yes, that's an accurate statement: wood identification, not tree identification -- he's mostly interested in the wood after it's been cut and used, rather than while it's still growing.) The second, which I'm taking because I have to, is Lynn Margulis' "Environmental Evolution." The issue, for me, is the balance of class-work and work-work. See, until this semester, I have taken my classes instead of lunch break, and worked extra hours to compensate for having to spend a lot of time in class. This semester, though, is a little bit different: my assigned (work) goals for the year include "advancing my academic progress." In other words, it's now part of my job to take classes. Because of this, I'm finding myself feeling that, as long as my other work is done, I shouldn't have to skip lunch or work extra hours to go to class. Sure, if I have projects at work that have to be done, I'll stay late to finish them, but I'd do that anyway; it's part of being a salaried employee. But should I really have to put in extra hours, beyond what I need to complete my job and fulfil the 37.5 hour week (40 hours, less a half-hour lunch each day), simply because I'm trying to meet my job requirements? If so... what about the safety training course I just had to take? Should I have to make up the time spent in that? What about the program documentation that I have to do... that's in my goals as well. Should I have to work extra time to account for that? I'm not sure, really... clearly, taking academic classes is different than a 2 hour safety class, or the completion of a programming project I did for work. But how different? Anyone have any thoughts? Current Music: Mark Knopfler -- Sailing to Philadelphia ("Baloney Again" at the beginning of this post) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
9:04 am	Steampunk! For those of you who haven't seen it yet, there's an article(link!) in Wired about a guy who's building steam-powered RC toys. Sounds like fun to me.... (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
9:46 am	I'm in shock. I just checked my grades from last semester. My prof in History of Modern Philosophy gave me an A-. This wouldn't be surprising, except that I'd spent the summer afraid to check my grades, because I thought I'd failed. My average for work during the semester was about an 80, and my final paper, when you get down to it, was an attempt to prove that Descartes had some good ideas, but they don't work in a culture other than his. My prof has spent his entire professional life studying Descartes, and refused to listen to any arguments about his work during class. In order for me to have gotten an A-, he has to have given me above a 95 on my final paper. Ok... I feel a little better about last semester now. Current Music: Sarah Brightman -- "In Paridisium" (from the album "Eden") (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 26th, 2006
8:59 pm	Good music! I went to visit my folks last weekend, partly because my sister was back for a few days from the west coast. A few things worthy of note from the visit: Seals! We went for a sail, and saw seals! They were hanging out on the rocks offshore from the harbor... since we were in a fairly small sailboat, we were able to get pretty close. There were probably eight or nine on the rocks, and a few more in the water. Music! A local store, Floating Lotus, arranged for the group 35th Parallel to play an outdoor concert out on the neck. They're really good, though I suspect they wouldn't be as good recorded: a lot of what I liked about them was watching them play, though the venue helped a lot. (I spent most of the concert lying on the seawall, alternating between watching them and watching the sky) They play more or less asian and middle-eastern music, frequently combined in odd ways. Check out their site, download the track of the month (apparently they're sorting through old recordings, and putting up whatever catches their fancy, mostly from old concerts), and go see them if they're playing somewhere near you. Current Music: 35th Parallel -- "Lunar" (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 24th, 2006
9:10 am	Finally! A sensible news article about terror attacks and the American response! (Yes, there have been others, but I liked this one a lot...) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
9:54 am	Don't wash your car! You could make art out of it instead! (Comment on this)
Friday, July 28th, 2006
4:41 pm	Huh? My boss just asked for a status update on a project she cancelled close to a month ago, apparently in the belief that I was still working on it. I... can't even think of anything obnoxious to say about this. Current Mood: confused Current Music: The hum of the AC, and dozens of CPU fans (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
1:21 pm	stolen bandwidth, and how to cope Most people wouldn't notice if their neighbors were using their wireless network. Those who do, mostly either don't care or just lock down the connection. Turns out there's a third option. (Skip the tech babble if you want, and look at the screenshots to see what he's done to his neighbors' connection) (Comment on this)