beth_leonard

I gave up playing mindless games like Candy Crush and 2048 for lent. So I found this instead:
https://deadlockempire.github.io/#menu

I remember tracking down a bug in a program at HP that was essentially the problem in the #5 "Deadlock" challenge. Our code hadn't changed in weeks, yet our regression tests were failing to complete about every 10 days, and I eventually tracked down why. I still remember the elation of figuring it out a decade and a half later. And yes, I did figure it out while in the shower. It's where engineers get our best thinking in.

--Beth

Update: I'm testing "BusyCal" an app for the mac that seems to have the features I need. It won't sync directly to my iPod touch, but it will sync to the mac cloud, or if I can get it working, a CalDAV server. There doesn't seem to be a good way in the iTunes interface to change the calendar app that the iPod touch syncs to.
--Beth
===========

This is why I never upgrade... Anyone have a good calendar solution that would fit my work flow? I just upgraded my mac from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, and iCal has changed for the worse -- the snooze function I used several times a day has disappeared, and I spent 45 minutes on the phone on hold to confirm that.

The function I'm missing is: I set alarms in my calendar to show up on my computer audibly and visibly 20 minutes before my noon karate class so that I don't miss class. Sometimes I'm in the middle of something and I tell it to snooze for either 1 or 5 minutes. With the upgrade to Yosemite, the only choices are to cancel the alarm or snooze for 15 minutes. I also frequently tell it to snooze for a whole day when a birthday reminder pops up, for example.

I sync my calendar to my desktop (now running OSX Yosemite) and my iPodTouch, although I don't need the alarms on my iPod Touch to show up. I do need events to show up in both places after I've entered an event in only one of them.

Other must-have calendar features: Repeating events with both styles: "every 10th of the month" and "every 3rd Tuesday" are mandatory features of a calendar program. This is true for weekly, monthly, and yearly events. "Every 2nd month on the 3rd Monday" would also be used, but I can live without that.

I also use different calendar colors: blue for regular weekly events, green for 1-off events, red for things that are important to other people. Once or twice a year I'll print a monthly calendar, but I can probably live without these features.

I'd strongly prefer to sync locally only, and not sync to the cloud, but if a cloud-based solution still works when our flakey local internet is down, I could possibly tolerate it if the other features I use work.
--Beth

Go me! I just moved something from the "infinity list" to the "done" list! We re-stained the play structure today. I admit to getting help from a friend who donated the work hours and equipment to the church charity auction which I purchased, but hey, I feel like I'm actually making forward progress in life again and need to pat myself on the back every once in a while.

--Beth
P.S. I use https://trello.com/ to manage the family To-Do list. It's like shared stacks of post-it-notes you can drag around, and assign people and due-dates to, and I love it. Things are still falling off the bottom of my to-do list, but at least I know they're there. It's one of 4 tabs that I open automatically every time I get a new browser window.

My regular computer is in the shop. I (theoretically) have backups of everything, and multiple backups of important things like unfinished customer videos, but it is very annoying and a little frightening.

When it started having heat-related issues with the ethernet, I considered buying new hardware, but decided against not because the hardware was too expensive, but because I can't buy hardware that runs software as old as I've got, and the software is no longer sold in the flavor I need. The software costs more than a whole computer.

They said it would take at least five days to diagnose.

It's hard to wait, and time consuming to work around. If I write less than usual or I'm slow to respond to e-mail, that's why. Likewise, I sure hope I don't miss any events, because I was unable to sync the calendar on my iPod Touch with the computer iCal calendar before sending it into the shop, and I've already noticed one event that isn't totally up to date.

--Beth

Taking the Stanford AI class makes me appreciate Live Journal's stability and reliability.

--Beth

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: 36

I just tried to view a video on YouTube and was told I need to "verify" my account. Things are so broken over there that logging in with the exact same username and two different passwords logs me in to two different accounts -- one of which has an account name that doesn't match the username, and the other that I was actually trying to log in to. It took me an hour to finally figure that out.

I still have to figure out how to unlink one YouTube account that YouTube thinks is my primary, and I never use, so that I can link my primary YouTube account with my Google account, which I also never use, except to access services that require me to have made an account there. My as-yet-unlinked YouTube account is the only actual account that I've ever used with Google services.

Sysadmining is annoying. I had intended to go to sleep early tonight.
--Beth

Edit: I have appeared to successfully navigated the process. It involved helpful status messages such as, "Note: Your old YouTube password will no longer work. You need to use your Google Account password from now on."

You mean that password that kept logging me into the account I didn't want to be logged in to? I'm hoping everything will work correctly now.

Dear printer,

If I tell you to print multiple copies of a single page document, please do not duplex them.

Thank you,
--The management

My computer is simultaneously letting me burn a CD, print a CD, compress a movie, and watch a movie. I suppose I'm also reading e-mail and posting to LJ too.

Just had to share,
--Beth

I've been waiting for an iPod touch with a built-in camera for a long, long, time, and last week Apple finally announced it. Because I knew my mom would be happy to get my old one I decided to be on the bleeding edge of the upgrade path this once and I ordered it the day it was announced.

It arrived today and seems very spiffy. I'm itching to try out the video-chat features, not necessarily because I need them, but because, well, if you owned a Dick-Tracey style device, wouldn't you want to test it out?

According to the documentation, I can only use the FaceTime app with someone else who also has FaceTime on wireless, so if you do, give me a "call" using the standard beth at slimy e-mail address. Unfortunately, I'll be away from the wireless network for most of Tuesday, I don't know yet if it has any sort of message box, but that could be fun to try too.

--Beth

It's amazing to contemplate that with 243 GB free on my work hard drive, it's still not enough space for my current project. What will life look like when I eventually go to HD delivery?

--Beth

Warning:

It is very easy to spend far too much money buying children's audio books on iTunes to download to the iPodTouch and play in the car for the kids.

--Beth

I'm now gleefully looking forward to filling up my gas tank. I don't think I've done that since I was 16.

I bought a little iPhone app called "road trip" that will calculate my gas milage for me. Jon and I used to record all the data but never crunched the numbers to do anything with it. After we had kids we stopped doing that. I think I get about 25mpg on the minivan, but I want to know for sure. I also want to play with seeing whether or not the milage changes if I change the grade of gas we use, or get oil changes more frequently.

Luckily we're going on a road trip this weekend, so I'll have plenty of opportunities to fill up the tank in my near future.

I suppose I could always fill it when it's only half-full... but perhaps that's going a bit too far.

--Beth

PS. If you're an iPhone/iPodTouch user and have a favorite gas app you think I should try, let me know. I went straight to the "pro" version of this one because it got good reviews and for $5 I didn't want to bother learning the lite version and switching over (also I think lite only handles one car) but I'm willing to try a few to begin with until I find one I like best.

Current Location: more than twice 16

All evening long I've been fighting with trying to get mail sent from slimy.com (or leonardfamilytutoring.com) to a hotmail address and failing. It keeps sending bounce messages like this:

This is the mail system at host phantom.slimy.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system

<name-here@hotmail.com>: host mx4.hotmail.com[65.55.37.120] said: 550 SC-001
Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for
rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or
IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not an email/network admin please
contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network
admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery
information and support (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

[-- Attachment #2: Delivery report --]
[-- Type: message/delivery-status, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 0.7K --]

Reporting-MTA: dns; phantom.slimy.com
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 4464681CA
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; beth@oasis.slimy.com
Arrival-Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 08:13:26 +0000 (UTC)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; shannon_o@hotmail.com
Original-Recipient: rfc822;shannon_o@hotmail.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; mx4.hotmail.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 SC-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for
policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with
spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not
an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider
for help. Email/network admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for
email delivery information and support

[-- Attachment #3: Undelivered Message --]
[-- Type: message/rfc822, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 2.9K --]

...

When I send the message to gmail, it winds up in my spam the first time I use an address, but if I move it out, subsequent messages get through just fine. We added the spf stuff MS wants, and it shows up in gmail as "pass" so I don't know what else to try.

Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of beth@oasis.slimy.com designates 74.82.3.76 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.82.3.76;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of beth@oasis.slimy.com designates 74.82.3.76 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=beth@oasis.slimy.com

Help me O internet friends, you're my only hope!
--Beth

Our DSL line appears to be down. We have some redundancy with the Fiber line, but our e-mail goes through the DSL. For family members who want to communicate with us about Thanksgiving plans, please call until further notice.

--Beth

When

mrc80238was out visiting he let me fondle his iPhone for a while. Ohhhh. I've had iPhone envy for some time because some of the moms at church have them. When I show up for an event on-time, and the next earliest person shows up 10 minutes late and uses her iPhone to check e-mail while we wait for the rest of them, I develop even more iPhone envy.

Luckily,

mrc80238also pointed out to me that the iPod Touch does nearly everything the iPhone does, except be a phone and have a monthly service charge. That's the main thing I didn't want with the iPhone.

I already have a cell phone. It takes pictures and costs me $5/month for all the minutes I would want to use, which is approximately 4. I see no need to pay $600+ over the next two year contract agreement for 4 minutes per month of phone time.

Nearly everywhere I go and would want to use net access has wifi (Church, Little Gym, if pre-school doesn't have it we could probably donate it to the school for less than the cost of a monthly service plan) so the iPod touch looks very tempting. I've stopped carrying a palm pilot, my old one won't hold a charge anymore, and I need to carry my calendar and contacts with me again.

With some comparison shopping, it looks like I want the iPod Touch 32GB version. The 8GB doesn't have as fast of a processor, and 40 hrs of movies with 32GB should be more than enough so I don't need 64GB. I think Amazon's price of $279 is the same as Costco's, but I should probably double-check. With our outrageous 9.25% sales tax, it's cheaper than Costco as long as Costco is $255 or more, and I seem to remember Costco being $279 too.

So, dear friends (and family) is there any reason why I shouldn't get myself an iPod Touch? It's the same price as my first Palm Pilot so many years ago. I really need to duplicate that functionality again with a mobile calendar and address book, and the iPod touch does so much more.

--Beth

Our e-mail has been going up and down the last few days. We think we've fixed it, and then it's down again. We don't find out that outgoing mail isn't going out until at least 4 hours after it's been sent.

On the plus side, I didn't have any spam this evening...

If something is important, please call. (Live Journal also says that they're having DDOS attacks, so LJ comments may or may not get through to be read by us.)

--Beth

I'm trying to clear space in my cell phone camera. It seems the only way to get the pictures off is to e-mail them to myself 1 at a time for 25 cents each -- but I can add cc addresses for free! I've just set up livejournal to be able to receive those pictures so they will do something other than rot in my e-mail spam folder. In theory, these will be posted on my kids filter, in practice I don't know how they'll all show up and I may have to edit later.

One of these days I need to clean my house and *find* my diaper bag camera. I haven't seen it since our Pollock Pines trip and I want to get those pictures off of it too. It also includes my Christmas & Mike's wedding pictures.

--Beth

Dear Internet friends,

Could you please help me find another copy of Amber's yellow blanket?

It looks like this:
www.shopext.com/iq50D--Carter's--Receiving-Blankets-4-Pack--Yellow-Check-White-with-Yellow-Print.html

(the yellow and white checked one)
[Edit: Arg. That link has an apostrophe in it that doesn't get handled properly by LJ for some reason.
I downloaded the photo:

The description is "Carter's - Receiving Blankets 4-Pack - Yellow Check/White with Yellow Print (073654314267)" and it links to a 404 Amazon page. Another link on Amazon links to the same description dead link.

I can't seem to find it for sale anywhere. Can someone with more internet-foo than I have find one for me to buy? I don't care if it's eBay or otherwise. Frankly, price is not an issue. While I know I wouldn't pay $1000, I'm not sure at exactly what price below that I'd stop bidding.

Amber reminded us again today that we lose hers / leave it behind far too often.

Thanks,
--Beth
PS. It is not this:

Another ebay item fitting the description Carter's Yellow Blanket

Her's is yellow/white plaid, all-cotton, not knit. I found a larger image:

I've dropped my old (model year 2001-ish, bought used in 2005 for $600) laptop before. But last Thursday when I dropped it I broke it. I first bought it to use while nursing Peter when he was 3 months old because I could nurse and use a laptop, but not a desktop, effectively.

I tried to fix it, but not terribly hard. I never was satisfied with the low screen resolution of the old one and I didn't store anything other than my browser bookmarks on it. If I wanted to spend another few hours I could likely get the bookmarks off.

Today I spent ~5 hours on-line searching for a replacement, and finally found one:

The Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad R-series 14 inch WXGA+.

By the time I added on options and subtracted out discounts (there was a $118 e-coupon I got from clicking on their Google ad and remembering to type it in) my total after tax and shipping was $735.

Part of me hates paying this much for anything, but if it lasts 3 years, and I use it 3hrs/day, I'm under $1/hr for laptop use. Here's hoping the next one serves as well as the last one did, if not better. (The screen is much better, and I primarily just browse the web and read e-mail.)

--Beth

My G5 has decided to have disk troubles. ( grumble cut )
I've searched the net and I plan to download and try out Data Rescue II for the mac. Any comments?

--Beth

[PS. OBeth, the master files for your projects are all safe and sound, as is a copy of the finished disk.]

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Entries tagged with computers

The Deadlock Empire is mine!! Bwa ha ha ha!

Upgrade woes: Seeking new calendar solution

Patting myself on the back.

Computer down.

Reliability

I think they really need some help...

Dear printer

I <3 my mac

Spiffy new iPod touch arrived today!

Space

iPod Touch warning

Can't wait to fill up the tank

Grumble. Trying to send e-mail to a hotmail user

Internet outage

iPod Touch, should I get one?

Getting through the evening is faster when there's no new e-mail

Pictures coming from my cell phone

Internet search help -- Amber's yellow blanket

New laptop

Grumble. Macintosh disk troubles