Category Archives: GeekWorld

Bees, Dogs, GeekWorld, Humanities, World History

Carpe this Diem

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Imbolc                                                 Waxing Bridgit Moon

OK.  Today is a new day.  I do not plan to torture my computers anymore today in regard to my legacy laserjet printer.  It has been a faithful companion throughout the last 19  years and I do not plan to give up on it yet.  Even so, I’ve experienced my tolerance level of geek futility since I tried to convert it from parallel processing to usb, so it will rest on the sidelines for a while as I install the new multi-function printer later in the day.  If I can find a new laserjet printer for under $300 I may just get one with a native usb connection.  Not sure I’d do with old faithful.  I might bring it in here (the study) and see if I can convince it to mate up with the Gateway in here.  I might give it to somebody with a parallel printer port.

I know, too, that losing colonies is still common for beekeepers and that my experience is not unusual.  In fact, as I said a bit earlier, I was not surprised by the deaths of two of the colonies. Only the package colony’s demise surprised me, since it seemed to have plenty of honey and a healthy group of bees.  Another year is another year.

With temperatures above freezing the dogs are frisky, staying outside longer, bumping, running, tails held high.  They both hunt between the honey house and the play house, noses to the ground, body alert.  Kona still finds the outdoors a bit too cool and no wonder, she no longer has any hair on her butt.  I know how it feels when there’s no hair on the head, probably a similar sensation.  And it is hard for Kona to put a hat or a scarf on that particular location.

I’m inclining toward a Renaissance theme for the Titian tours.  This exhibit showcases the High Renaissance in Venice from its beginnings in the early 1500’s through its end in the 1580’s.  Venice held on to the Renaissance longer than the rest of Italy, though even its extension ended well before the Renaissance limped toward its end in the 1700’s in northern Europe.  The Renaissance gave shape and content to our era, actually doing what those embroiled in it thought they were doing, ushering in the modern age, shifting from the ancien regime to the days of democracy, individualism, capitalism and science, days within which we still live.

Not often do we have the chance to experience such a clear visual record of this dramatic change in the lifeways of Western civilization, a record written not in words, but in the brushstrokes and vital imaginations of artists who distilled the time and painted it.  On canvas.  Using oils.

Bees, GeekWorld

A No Good Day

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Imbolc                                          Waxing Bridgit Moon

Some days.  You know.  This was one.  I got the printer cable.  Spent another 2+ hours fiddling with the printer.  Nothing positive.  Still.  I know it’s a breed fault, but I do prefer to be competent.  At everything I do.  Every time.  Not perfectionism.  It’s competencism.  Things don’t have to be perfect, but they have to display my general competence, or else.  Well.  You may have been down that hole, too.  It can get deep.

Then, I went out to check on the bees.  I suppose I might have missed something, I did last spring, but I don’t think so.  All three dead.  Geez.  I didn’t stop to diagnose the cause.  I just closed the hive boxes up and walked back inside.

I tried yet one more time on the printer.  Well, actually, several more times, flailing at different solutions suggested by this website and that.  Even went into DOS, foreign territory for me.  I got in and got out of DOS unscathed, but no closer to a solution.

If I had any hair left, I’d be pulling it out right about now.  Guess I’m gonna have to call Steve again.  See if he say some words over the machines, toss some holy byte water at them.  I don’t know.  An exorcism?

The good thing is.  Worked out.  Got my endorphins buzzing around the old synapses.  Sweat.

Now.  I can be philosophical.  Never to fail is never to do.  Never to do is to be dead.  I want to be alive.  I want to try things that challenge me.  Guess failure is part of that.  Gotta be.  Otherwise no forward progress.  So, I’ve got two challenges ahead:  get the packages installed in early April.  Do the due diligence before hand to find out what killed the bees.  Fix what I can fix.  Get the printer installed.  One damn way or another.

Grrr.

GeekWorld

No Joy

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Imbolc                                                       Waxing Bridgit Moon

Hmmm.  Spent an hour + last night with the network guy.  He took over my PC through a remote connection, a free app called showmypc.com, fished through my network settings, my printer settings and did a number of things I’d never imagined doing.  In the end though we still had no more luck than I’d already had.  None.  This cheered me up since I didn’t feel quite so inept afterward.

Heading over to Radio Shack for another try on the printer parallel to usb cable.  I avoided buying the Radio Shack cable because it was more expensive, but I’ll try it now anyhow.  As soon as I get this one set up, I’ll put the new printer online, too.  I’m not expecting trouble with it since it’s plug-n-play.  Each problem is a learning opportunity and I say that with no tongue in cheek.  If you pay attention to the problem solving, it’s true.

So, among other things on external Saturday, I’m headed for every geeks favorite store, Radio Shack.  Always good to have an excuse to go there.  At some point today or tomorrow it looks like the temps will rise above freezing, so I will have a chance to check on the bees.  Bee season has begun in active way, as has the growing season.  I have a few other things to accomplish over the weekend, get a system repair disc made for each of the new gateways, crank up the chainsaw and get my Titian tour together since I have my first tour on Thursday, the 17th.

Aging, GeekWorld, Humanities

68. My Driver’s License Will Be Good Until I’m 68? Hmmm.

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Imbolc                                                      Waxing Bridgit Moon

There are those moments.  Drove over to Ramsey city hall (municipal center sounds much more… what?), walked through the glass doors and the 20 foot high atrium, all in stone and glass, followed the signs and found the License Center.  I filled out a form, missing four questions, handed to the nice lady and she clipped the ear off my current driver’s license, collected my $24 (a fee, not a tax) and took me over to the vision machine.  Wonder of wonders, for the first time in 8 years, I passed.  How about that?  Up against the blue wall, smile.  “Great picture!” the nice lady said.

The real shocker?  This new license will be good until I’m 68.  68!  How did that happen again?

Tonight I’ll get a call from the network guy to see if he can walk me through the problem that’s keeping my printer from shaking hands with my two new computers.  Well, sorta new.  Decided I’m going to RTFM the backup stuff.  I really oughta know how to work this stuff, otherwise, what’s the point of backing stuff up?

End of the week.  Another legcom meeting under my belt, the Titian walk through and some quality time with the exhibit yesterday and today Latin.  My Ovid work drew nice remarks from my tutor.  He essentially agreed with my translation.  As a rough draft.  Which it was.  My English to Latin was a little more fuzzy, showing that I whipped through it faster than is required to do good work.  I’m still working on Diana and Actaeon.  I’d like to finish it before the show leaves.

Each segment, the legcom, the Titian preparation and the Latin, requires serious prep work.  Makes me feel good, sorta like exercise.  Which, by the way, I gotta go do.

GeekWorld, Politics, World History

Fire in the Streets

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Imbolc                                                     Waxing Bridgit Moon

See.  It helps to share your pain.  Woolly brother and cybermage Bill Schmidt gave me the number of his son-in-law, Steve Johnson, who runs a part-time business called I-tech.  He knows networks and backups, doing that kind of thing during the day for 3M.  I’m gonna give him a call.  Time to stop banging my head against this stuff.

I’ve not kept on top of the Tunisia, Egypt coverage and have missed a lot of the analysis, so this may be ill-informed; but, it all sounds pretty healthy to me.  Dictators may seem more stable from a US foreign policy perspective, yet they often/always? do disservice to the people(s) and the nation which they rule.  Whether kept in power by US aid and good will or by their own ham-fisted acts, dictators lack a key ingredient for legitimate power, the assent of the governed.  By definition in a dictatorship there is no consent by the citizenry, yet their rule could work if the people assented to their government.  And they may.  At first.  Especially if the dictator rose to power by throwing off a corrupt state government or overthrowing a sitting tyrant.  In the end though dictators dictate and no matter what the political philosophy of the whole, no one likes being told what to do time and again with the force of arms behind it.

It should come as no surprise when people in such situations say, enough.  In fact, to old political hacks like me, it’s more surprising people take as long as they often do, fearing the consequences of action.  Of course, from our North American vantage point, it seems the outcome of these people’s movements must be radical Islamist states, but I think it too soon to tell.

An even more intriguing bit of analysis will come from discerning the true role of social media.    They are, of course, a new player in politics and one few people understand very well.  Except maybe those that use it for these purposes.

Whatever the outcome, whatever the analysis, these uprisings have clear public support.  What happens next could determine the fate of the unfortunate Middle East for years to come.  One less:  beware the lure of wealth from natural resources.  They destabilize as much as–more–than they stabilize.  Just ask residents of Minnesota’s Iron Range or any of the First Nations in either Canada or the U.S.

GeekWorld

A Purple, No, A Cyberhaze

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Imbolc                                                  Waxing Bridgit Moon

I have all my files from 3 computers backed up.  Only problem?  I don’t understand the back-up software.  I wish it would just let me call up the files in the same way I do on this machine.  I’m in a cyberhaze right now, machines too complicated for this guy’s savvy.  I may have to call in some help.  Hell, I can’t even get my computers to talk to my printers.  Ah, well.  It’s important to know when to say uncle byte me.  Not quite there yet, but I’m close.

This stuff bothers me.  Why?  I guess it’s like the guy who fixes his own car, but suddenly faces something he knows is beyond his skill level.  Seems like he oughta be able to do it, but he can’t.

Art and Culture, Bees, GeekWorld, Humor

Disassembled

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Imbolc                                         Waxing Bridgit Moon

Looks like I’ll get a chance to peek into the colonies this weekend.  Got my fingers crossed on survival.  Best guess?  Two dead, one alive.  Very glad to be wrong.

Got my second Gateway part way disassembled and still not sure I can get at the pint sized disc I stupidly inserted into the DVD drive vertically.  It fell out of the holder, as I could have guessed it would.  Have to get this in though to make the computer recognize the cable to USB cord.  That will shift my old HP printer to the new gateway, making it accessible directly from the network rather than through my old, now terminally ill, Dell.  Once I’ve accomplished that I can bring online the new HP multi-purpose printer.  When that’s up, I can scan in my Ovid commentary and send it to Greg so we can both have the same info.  I need both of these printers working, but there are these other steps I have take.

On to Latin.  This chapter, chapter 27, contains this section heading:  Adjectives Having Peculiar Forms in the Superlative.  Peculiar forms, eh?  Maximus peculiar.

More Latin today, some Titian, too, in advance of the walkthrough tomorrow with Patrick Noon, the painting’s curator.  I’m looking forward to this since I haven’t seen the paintings yet.  In the evening there is a lecture on Ukiyo-e prints, another favorite genre for me.  A feast of art education, tomorrow.

GeekWorld

The Color Printer Scam

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Winter                                                      Waning Moon of the Cold Month

BF Skinner’s definition of creativity?  Noticing that the chicken is an eggs’ way of making more eggs.   This quip came to mind when I took my Canon pixma printer into the shop for repair.  The guy said, truthfully, too, that it may well cost more to fix it than to buy a new one.  Why?  Because a printer is just an ink maker’s way of making you buy more ink.  Color printers have low prices so folks will snap them up, take them home and print lots of color stuff, or, alternatively, print black and white stuff while the pricey color inks go dry anyhow.  I have an HP Laserjet 4m that handles all of my black and white printing, the toner, while not cheap, lasts 5-6,000 pages and I bought this HP in 1992 or so.  It’s one of the few things I own that is older than the Celica.  Gnashing of teeth on the pixma.

Scurried over to the grocery store for that stuff I forgot yesterday, then back home for lunch.

Now I’m going to pick up the Titian catalog, read some there, and spend time in Wheelock chapter 26, comparatives.  After that, the treadmill.

GeekWorld, US History, Weather +Climate

The DOW Goes Up; The DOW Goes Down.

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Winter                                                  Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“I do not have what I own, nor do I have what I do. I only have what I am.” – D. Trinidad Hunt

Rising temperatures, even rising toward freezing, activate the doer in me.  I want to get out and plant vegetables, check the bees, but that time is not yet, is still a long ways away, so I’ll focus on the hydroponics, Latin and Titian for awhile.  Colder temps activate the thinker, the reader, the researcher and they still dominate.   So, it’s to the books.

The DOW goes up; the Dow goes down.  Life goes on; joy is found.  All I have to say about the market.

I still have one printer in spasms.  I’ve tried fixes from the manual–yes, I RTFM!–I’ve tried fixes from the internet.  I’ve tried letting it rest and I’ve tried hitting with this and than for an hour at a time.  Enough to make me sputter.  Guess I’m gonna have to give and take the damn thing to a repair guy.  The shame of it all.  One other task defeated me, setting up a home wireless network.  That required the GeekSquad. I like to DIY electronics.  Not this time.

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, GeekWorld, Retirement

Expressionists

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Winter                                          Full Moon of the Cold Month

A cold stretch coming up.  The night of Kate’s retirement party predicted to be -22 with a high of 3 during the day.  I have disposable cameras to buy, chipboard for small signs and a couple of things to print out.  That last may be a problem.  My HP laserjet printer, one I’ve had since the late 90’s, you know, back in the last century, seems unwilling to accept a new toner cartridge.  I’ve changed these out many times over the last 10-12 years, so this is a puzzle.  My other printer, a Canon color printer, is also down right now.  I’m going to take a stab at solving those while I’m out buying cameras and chipboard.

I’ve got my tour for tomorrow morning patched together.  We’ll start with Monet, the impressionist Haystack, to ground our further adventures in expressionism.  Where the plein air impressionists wanted to show just what their senses saw, color as created by light bouncing off of objects and received by painterly retinas, the expressionists gave up the senses to the camera and tried to depict that cavern measureless to man, the human mind and human feeling.  Using the formal aspects of painting in new and unusual ways, color, bright color, chosen for its expressive nature rather than its sensory veracity, flowing lines not always stopping at the borders of one object, compositions set flat against the canvas, shoved up toward the front with all the Renaissance experiments in perspective abandoned, the expressionists wanted to evoke feeling and the swirling inner life of the individual.

Some of my favorite pieces in the museum are in our expressionist collection:  Beckmann’s Blind Man’s Buff, Kandinsky’s Study for Improvisation V and the Egon Schiele painting to the right.

Well, back to the tour work.