Month: November 2004

I took today off in leu of working saturday. I finished reading one of the harry potter books and started the next one. My achievement of the day was fixing the lock on the boot of my car. I have been putting it off till I had time to look at it put it back together then go to the dealer to pick up the parts I needed. Turned out that all I need to do was strip down the lock barrel degrease it rub off some corrosion on a couple pins then put it all back together. Once i worked out how to put it all back in the car I discovered that the car alarm would go off every time I opened the boot (thats trunk for you yanks). So after looking at it a bit more I worked out the microswitch in the lock wasn’t working, After pulling the lock out for about the 20th time I looked at the switch and saw that the wire had snapped. I didn’t think it was worth soldering so I made a trip to the dealer. $36 dollars later I have it installed and working. $36 dollars bought me a microswitch cost probably $0.10, a foot of wire $.20 and a connector $0.50. I have a feeling I could have replaced the microswitch if I had access to good electronic store, but this one had a couple holes in it for mounting onto the lock mechanism and I bet about $36 that they are not in the standard position. So now everything works as expected so mission accomplished. I can at least look on the bright side I didn’t pay for a dealer to make the repair, they would have just replaced all the parts for $100 plus at least another $50 for the labor.

I have been at work since 6am this morning, I left about 5;30pm I think. It was dark anyway when I went to work and dark when I came out.
I have been playing with an web frontend I wrote for snort while watching the end of PI and now I am watching Emma. Anyway It now daemonizes correctly which is very cool. I borrowed some code from spamd which it turns out is very similar to some examples on the web so I don’t feel any need to attribute it to spamd in the code. Eventually it will be published on https://sourceforge.net/projects/snortui/ there are just to many issues with it at the moment to release it to the public. It works very well but is a real bitch to set up.

Looks like I have another dying hard disk. I will need to check and see how many harddisks I have replaced in the last year. If this is the master disk then it is the original one from the computer. If it is the slave then I have no idea where it came from.

Unusual System Events
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Nov 17 11:04:40 sunbox dada: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING:
/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@0,0 (dad0):
Nov 17 11:04:40 sunbox Uncorrectable data Error: Block 72e70
Nov 17 11:04:40 sunbox uata: [ID 606412 kern.warning] WARNING: timeout: reset bus
chno = 0 targ = 0
Nov 17 11:04:42 sunbox dada: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING:
/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@0,0 (dad0):
Nov 17 11:04:42 sunbox disk not responding to selection
Nov 17 11:04:42 sunbox dada: [ID 107833 kern.notice] dad0: disk okay

Something sharing Continue reading

I need to pay attention next time I use an ATM. I was saying the other day that it shouldn’t be hard to remember that I always use english and I want a receipt. Guess what I noticed at the top of the last receipt I got from using a Bank of America ATM> “Save time. Set your ATM cash, language and receipt preferences now.” I am not sure how to do it but I will look next time.

I just finished reading an article about how they capture Monday night football in HD. Lots of tech talk in there but an interesting read.
I also discovered why my second ITX box wasn’t booting linux cleanly. I wrongly assumed that the hard disk would be configured as master out of the box, I guess it was cable select and plugged into the slave cable connector, just makes me want to go ARRRRGGG.
Loving the new TV that came on sunday. Mmmmm wide screen.
I went through about $20 worth of candy last night and need to hide the stuff that was left since I am sitting eating it all as I watch West wing.