Raible Designs

Finishing Chapters: Almost Lost It

In the course of the past week, while editing my chapters, Word (XP) has crashed on me a number of times. Every time I've been able to get my work back and lost nothing more than a few minutes. I'm very impressed as I once lost 10 pages in college. As I was finishing up - running spellchecker at 1:00 this morning - I received the following error and I almost lost it. I had to click OK a number of times before it finally recognized it. Picture me sitting here going "no, No, NO!!" ;-)

Font Size Problems?

If you're having font-size problems with this site since I added the dynamic font re-sizeing, I apologize. It was a problem with the fact that I was using percentages for the base font, rather than pixels. So it set the initial font to 70px rather than 70%!! I've reset the base font to be 11px - deleting your cookies or hitting the "R" button should fix the problem. Tip o' the hat to John Cavacas (no blog from what I can tell).

TiVo Upgrade Offer

If you're a TiVo owner, you've probably seen this upgrade offer in your TiVo messages. It looks awfully tempting:

Between now and March 10th (or while supplies last), we're offering you the one-time opportunity to make the switch to Series2 and transfer your product lifetime service. Ramp up your recording space to 80 hrs and gear up for Home Media Option.

For an additional $100, you can get the "Home Media Option" package and access MP3s, Photos, and schedule programs to record from the web. This is a good time management tool if you're a TV watcher. I grew up without a TV, so I don't really like watching TV and I think it's a waste of time. However, Julie is a TV addict - so much that she has to have it on all night while she sleeps. When I do watch TV, TiVo is a must.

The war in Iraq

I don't believe it's started yet, but "The war in Iraq" was the only title I could think of. Anyway, I haven't been too concerned with it up to this point. I don't know that I support it, but I don't want to be the victim of chemical or nuclear warfare either. However, it became pretty personal today when I received an e-mail from one of my best friends.

For those of you who didn't already know, I was recently activated and deployed to Kuwait on the seventh of February. Obviously I had to withdraw from school and could be here for up to a year. However, this is very unlikely and I'm speculating and hoping that out unit will be sent home in either May or June.
....
I'm stationed at Al Jaber Air Base approximately 45 miles northwest of Kuwait City. As you can imagine the base in a very busy place right now with units from all four service braches present, along with a small contingency of British troops. I can't disclose too much information about the resources in place or our mission, but I can tell you the base is well fortified and protected. I'm sorry I didn't get in touch with some of you before I left. I had a very limited amount of time between the time I was notified and actually deployed, and was very busy taking care of personal affairs.

Yikes! Now I really hope we don't go to war!

Gone Skiing

I'm outta here - for your viewing pleasure, here's a picture of Abbie to make you smile throughout the weekend.

MySQL Control Center

If you're using MySQL, you should checkout MySQL Control Center. It's the MySQL Administration client you've been looking for. It says it's cross-platform, but also notes that it doesn't support OS X at this point. I downloaded and installed it on Windows and it seems to work pretty well. Installed and worked in about 10 seconds, which is always a determining factor. You can also checkout these screenshots.

Wireless Printer Server and USB Hub?

I got my Wireless Print Server to work and I have a Canon S900 plugged into it for printing photos. I think this is a great photo printer, but Julie likes the ones we order through iPhoto better. Anyway, I also bought a USB Hub to hook up to the print server, in hopes of hooking up multiple printers. No such luck - when I hook up the hub, I can't find any printers (with the Linksys tools). Has anyone out there done this successfully?

RE: No Clock and Unplugged

Mark shares his frustration with the fact that he can get away from work in his No Clock post:

There is only one long continuous 24-hour day that is always work, always office, and I never punch in and I never punch out.

I hear him loud and clear. Lately, I've been working ~40 hour weeks and not doing any moonlighting - so I actually feel like I get to punch out. Except for my I-want-to-work-on-Roller (but evenings with Abbie and Julie are much more fun) syndrome, my life is completely and utterly enjoyable again. I don't even feel the need to unplug. But I probably should, as we all should. I challenge you all to follow in Mark's footsteps and unplug when you get a chance. I will be attempting to unplug this weekend when my parents are in town - but everyone is very computer-literate in my family, so I'm sure my mom, dad, sister and wife will all be checking e-mail and surfing all weekend, so it'll be difficult to restrain myself. It'd help a lot if all of you quit writing interesting stuff on you blogs. ;-) Next weekend I will be for sure unplugging as a few college buddies and I will be renting a condo in the hills and skiing all weekend.

Good Prices Galore: T68i and Apples 23" Cinema Display

I found a tip from Gizmodo today that the T68i from Sony Ericsson (I have this phone and love it) is now FREE (with service activation) at Amazon.com.

I also did a bit of surfing and discovered that Apple's 23-inch Cinema Display is now only $1999! Still a little rich for my blood, I'll wait until it hits $1200 this fall.

Back From Florida

We all survived the Florida trip and we arrived home safely a couple of hours ago. Abbie was awesome on the plane(s) and only cried when she was hungry. I'll post pictures soon. Also, it was cool to find that there was FREE wireless Internet access at the Fort Lauderdale airport. That's where I discovered this site was down, and Keith fixed it over the course of the day. It turned out to be related to the Tomcat/MySQL Connection - which was preventing the AJP Apache/Tomcat connector from starting. Restarting MySQL fixed the problem.

BTW, if you're flying Delta on your next trip - didja know you can check-in online 6 hours before your flight? You just print out your boarding pass and show it at the gate. Very cool in my book.