Category: Home Base

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Cooking With Code Home Base Television & Movies

Random rumblage

The good news on the spider bite tonight is that it doesn’t seem to be spreading – well, okay, just a little, but not upward. The foot is reddish and tender, and I can see veins pretty clearly, which is really unusual for feet. Or at least my feet. I’m due back at the doctor’s office on Tuesday to see where this is going – though if my follow-up is 48 hours after my initial visit, I’m guessing that there’s Cause For Concern. Either that or they just like taking my money. Probably a little bit of both.

I found and fixed a couple of bugs in “Doctor Who in 35 minutes“, as well as chopping it up into segments about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes long to cut back on the insane load times. This also had a beneficial side-effect of sharply increasing resolution – now you can tell which clips I sourced from crap-o-licious 20+ year old VHS tapes recorded off of AETN and OETA when I was in high school! Yay! 😆

Speaking of video projects, I think I may have mentioned redoing the PDF DVD ordering page as an old fashioned hand-coded HTML page – basically in theLogBook’s old, pre-Wordpress look – so that orders wouldn’t be tripped up by Globat’s endless database server errors. Lo and behold, I’ve had more orders in the past 24 hours than I have just about the entire rest of the month. Can’t ditch Globat soon enough. Incidentally, we’re now coming down the home stretch of the second edition – and that means there are about a hundred of these puppies floating around out there. Guess it’s not over yet after all. The proceeds from this round of DVD sales will go toward getting us moved to a hosting company that can actually keep a site up. If you think I’m overreacting, check this out. Or this. Or this. Or this hosting review page which has apparently accumulated so many complaints that they’ve closed the comments down. 😯 I have a hard time believing that these jokers haven’t gotten some class action lovin’.

I’ll bitch some more later. But you knew that, right?… Read more

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Cooking With Code Home Base Television & Movies

It’s the bite of the spider, it’s the thrill of the fight!

So I’ve had this wickedly itchy thing on the back of my right ankle for about a week now. I’ve soaked it in hot water, wrapped it in cold washcloths that spent a little bit of time in the freezer, I’ve done my level damned best to leave it alone and not scratch it. This morning when I got up, took Evan to his grandparents and got ready to feed horses, it was pure agony trying to put my muck boots on. Then I noticed it was about the size of a half-dollar (for those of you old enough to remember the 50-cent coin, a.k.a. the JFK half-dollar, a currency that I sorely miss) , and varied in color from purple to brown, and did I mention it hurting like hell? It hurt like hell. So after horse feeding time, I went to the doctor, who said he was pretty sure it was some sort of insect bite, and really nasty too. He hesitated to guess as to what kind of insect, but when I went to pick up my prescription and the stuff I’d need to wrap the ankle to keep a pad over the hugely ugly and painful open blister that’s there, the pharmacist basically confirmed that what I had on paper was a pretty stiff cocktail designed for someone who’s waited too long to treat a brown recluse bite that was pretty nasty to begin with. Joy. So I’m pretty much an inside-dweller until cleared: no yard work, definitely no horse feeding, keep it as antiseptic clean as possible until further notice. I’m hoping I’m not staring down the barrel of any lasting damage, but the whole foot is bright red and you can see veins sticking out. Between that and the drugs I’ve been prescribed, I’m just feeling woozy about the whole thing. First various farm injuries, then mutant monkey toes with more joints than a toe should have unless it happens to be a finger, and now this…what gives? Has someone got it in for my right foot?

Oh, and speaking of the doctor, or actually, speaking of the Doctor, here are 45 years of house calls in 35 minutes. If you don’t know your Doctor Who mythology, I’d suggest that sometime in the next week or three might be an outstanding time to catch up. Or so I’ve heard. 😉

For those whose efforts to get a PDF DVD have been frustrated by the constant downtime courtesy of Globat, I have replaced the PDF ordering page with a hand-coded HTML page that doesn’t have to have their SQL database server up and running. Orders for the DVD have taken a nose dive since the beginning of this month…right about the same time these constant server issues cropped up. But now that won’t be an issue any longer, at least for that portion of PDF. Never mind “baby needs a new pair of shoes” – at this rate I’m gonna need a new pair of feet!… Read more

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Gadgetology Home Base

Give us this day our daily power outage

At around 5:30 this morning I awoke to an ominous thunderous sound. It wasn’t actually thunder, but Xena thunderously knocking on the front door wanting to be let in before the actual thunder got here. I let her in and then shut down the Avid, which I had left on all night to render some stuff, and then we got yet another monsoon, and more flooding (hey, maybe we’ll get more Gamera!) and what’s becoming an almost daily tradition: the storm-induced power outage. I’m sure with storms rolling through just about every other day that there isn’t a chance to do a really comprehensive repair job on substations and whatnot, but it’s getting kind of silly.

Please Squeeze. I’d have something insanely cool to show you video-wise right now, except that all of a sudden, I can’t get Sorenson Squeeze to run on a single machine in my house. I’ll admit that I haven’t tried my wife’s laptop yet (though it has other issues that make me hesitant to even try, such as rolling over, powering down and playing dead with no warning), but it’s incredibly frustrating – this also means no new site video for stuff like Phosphor Dot Fossils (this has also held up a promo video that I’ve put together for the PDF DVD, which I’m sure is probably helping sales to drop off significantly, which they have). So maybe “incredibly frustrating” is being a bit on the charitable side. I’ve submitted a trouble ticket, though I have the feeling the fix will be “Upgrade to our new version for $XX!” I really don’t seem to be having much luck on the computer end these days, which is a surprise, because normally it’s purely mechanical problems that give me massive headaches. Which makes this next bit all the more surprising…

Holy #$%&, I fixed the air conditioner! Okay, maybe fix is too strong a work, because it wasn’t really broken, just frozen over, and this “fix” involved pointing a hair dryer on full heat at the ice until it melted away, and then taking a bucket full of warm soapy water and cleaning the intake vent, and then changing the filter that I should’ve changed probably a month or two back, which, if I’d done it then, this probably would never have happened. So on the balance of it, purely mechanical things still caused a massive headache. But I actually fixed it – if you want to call it that – without calling anyone out to do it, which I couldn’t afford anyway, which surprises me as much as it does anyone else. Still, I doubt the high-priced HVAC techs of the world have anything to fear from me. There are still plenty of people who are willing to pay them big bucks to aim a hair dryer on full heat at their iced-over intake.

More fun with Globat. Welcome back to Globat.com, fine web hosting and the home of Internal Server Errors galore! Today’s issue: “Server shutdown in progress.” Repeatedly. Sometimes you can actually get what you want from theLogBook’s databases…and just as often you can’t. The really fun part of this is on Scribblings, where each server shutdown forces me to go in and reconfigure my anti-spam plugin from scratch. If Globat sucked any more, they’d be off the Suck Scale on my suckometer. I can’t get the site moved away from these bozos fast enough.

Here’s hoping I can get some good Sorenson Squeeze lovin’ soon, because I’m eager to show off this…thing…that I want to show off. He said vaguely.… Read more

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Home Base Should We Talk About The Weather?

Like…totally?

Insurance SketchOkay, so maybe we didn’t skate out of the bad weather as unscathed as I thought. Apparently there was some roof damage, nothing big but also not the sort of thing you want to allow to get big over time, and – to my total slackjawed amazement – the insurance adjuster decided both vehicles were totalled. 😯 I really didn’t think they were that bad – yeah, a few dings and dents here and there, especially on the driver’s side of my wife’s vehicle which she uses to deliver the mail – but apparently the insurance company feels like spending money. So…I guess the check’s in the mail, so to speak. In the meantime, either hail or wind or both apparently managed to push our sliding door off its track, something I had to fix tonight.

It could be worse. The house in Fort Smith that everyone’s seen on the news – that one house that was compeltely demolished – is where the doula we hired to help out with my wife’s labor and delivery lives. I’m told that she and her family are in good shape, between insurance and the church they go to going all-out to help, but still…maybe I’m way too attached to all my “stuff” (not a statement I can really honestly say I’d argue with), but I can’t imagine losing my hermitag…uh…house like that.

More thoughts to follow later when I stray somewhat closer to the coherent end of the spectrum.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Home Base

Delicious cheese and fine whines

The weather tonight is totally bizarre – we’re under a tornado watch now, with plenty of bad stuff headed this way, and we’re under a winter storm watch at the same time, because after the storms blast through and rip off everyone’s roof, the temperature’s going to drop like a rock and it’ll start snowing. If there’s ever a time I’m glad to not still be working in TV, this is it – this is kind of like the Perfect Storm for broadcast purposes: a 24-48 hour period where directors, weather talent, camera crew, etc. will be stuck at the station. I can think of much better ways to spend my Sunday night, thanks, like holding Evan’s hand until he falls asleep. It’s good to be daddy. And speaking of that… … Read more

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Critters Home Base

And the winner is…

Jar Jar BinksThe winner of the Really Bad Visual Pun post yesterday is…well, there are two winners, since I posted it here and on MySpace. The blawg winner was Ubik, while the MySpace winner was Kati (as I said in the comments over there, dudes, you guys just got beat by a girl on a Star Wars gag. C’mon!). The answer, of course, was “Jar Jar Binks”. (Actually, even that’s a bit of a cheat – there’s only one jar of binks, but I just turned it around 180 degrees, moved it over a bit, and glued the two photos together.) Stay tuned for even more cheesy-ass puns constructed out of ordinary household items. (Or, as Ubik pointed out, cheesy items in my household. Not everyone’s got a jar o’ binkies sitting around. But they should.)

There’s been much speculation in the comments sections that the result of Obi’s odyssey will be a crop of mini-Obis running around in mere months. If that happens, I’ve got a pretty steep vet bill from about a year ago to dispute, ’cause somethin’ obviously didn’t work. 😆 I’m just glad the big furry doofus is back among us. He’s seemed kinda subdued and maybe even a bit sad since he got home, though part of that may be that since he rejoined the general cat populace, Olivia and Othello spent 24 hours (at least) hissing at him because he came home smelling kinda funky. Olivia has stopped growling at him and plays with him again, but Othello is still giving Obi the cold shoulder. The real litmus test was when Obi jumped on the changing table while I was putting a new diaper on Evan. Evan has been rolling up on his sides, almost to the point of rolling over on his belly, pretty regularly, so Obi was a little surprised when Evan rolled up on one side and grabbed his cat. I think that’s the welcome home he was expecting. Not even the smell of a visit from Captain Pooty Pants can keep Obi away from his person. (Captain Pooty Pants raises such a stink these days that I think he’s angling for a promotion to Rear Admiral…)

The thought occurs, having very recently spent a lot of time out in my horrendously overgrown pasture looking for the great grey hunter, and coming back to the house with thorns and stickers stuck to me and LOST a lot of weight - get it? Ha! It's funny!through me, that something needs to be done with the pasture. Tactical nukes spring immediately to mind, but maybe just bulldozing the damn thing might be more realistic – pave the whole thing over, turn it into a giant solar panel, with big windmills at one end and a couple of greenhouses for growing food. What a sight that would be. But as ridiculous as it sounds, it’d be a damn sight better than the Absolutely Nothing that we’re doing with 3+ acres right now. It’s such a jungle out there that I half expect the Smoke Monster to pop out from behind the barn or something. Hey, there’s an idea. I could cut those guys such a better deal than Hawaii could.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Home Base

One (if not more) of those weeks

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. (It’s not entirely my fault – it kinda helps for the site to be up so I can update it. Apparently theLogBook’s web hosting service has had a hell of a week too.) It’s been a bit of a rough week, the kind that you just don’t expect to have when “all” you have to do is hang out with an infant most of the time. Hopefully, there’s light at the end of the tunnel – and hopefully it’s not a UFO waiting to probe me or something. I hate that.

I’ll have a full review soonish, but I’ve been listening to Frank Klepacki’s Universe At War game soundtrack a lot lately, and it’s a winner. The end titles alone are just epic. This guy needs a movie to score – the kind with lots of explosions (and probably mecha) – stat. I’ve also been listening to an inordinate amount of ELO lately – just musical comfort food. “All Over The World” is kinda like the best song ever right now.

Anyway, I’ll hush up about all that for the moment. If you guys wanted real emo, you’d be watching UHF. But what you really want…are baby and kitty pics. Admit it. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base

GOALLLLLLLLL!

How's my driving?I’ve had a couple of train wreck days here lately, and Friday was definitely the icing on the cake. Evan was more temperamental than he’s been since he was born, and it was just because he’s been such a good kid, not prone to tantrums or other big displays without a reason, that it caught me off guard. And I know he’s still a good kid – I don’t believe there’s really “misbehavior” at the almost-four-month mark, just reactions to stimuli that I’m just not picking up on. (It doesn’t really help that I’m worn out at the moment.) It just alarmed me to feel like he was testing my patience, even though he wasn’t. It wasn’t him, just all in my head.

I’m not usually one to go for the New Year’s Resolution thing, because I’ve been at 1024 x 768 for years. That and, well, while I’m not going to say I can’t keep a promise to save my life, my circumstances seem to change so randomly that I try not to make any promises that I’m not sure I can keep. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Funny Stuff Home Base

OU200812

Good MorningLet it never be said that I don’t know how to party. I left 2007 behind and rang in 2008 with a big bottle in my hand and getting kisses from a sassy young female.

Now, granted, the sassy young female was Olivia, who decided she’d jump up and lick my chin while I was feeding the bottle to Evan, but still! I am living on and/or near the edge, am I not?

Other than that, I think this post from a year ago pretty much sums up my new years’ feelings in general. I hope 2008 is good to you if you’re reading this (not that this should be taken to imply that I wish a pox, or a bunch of rox, or botox, upon those who aren’t reading this). I’m looking forward to more Evan time myself.… Read more