My collage class ring

Categories: Random Thoughts
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Published on: March 23, 2006

Today when I was washing my hands, the gem fell out. I will admit I am not at all happy about that, I got it back ’99 it should not have fallen apart in less then 7 years. I called the manufacture of it, they said if I send it in, they will fix it for free. I will be sending it via UPS soon, my right hand ring finger is going to feel odd for a while, almost always have it on.

Free Time (where did it go?)

Categories: Random Thoughts
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Published on: March 22, 2006

OK, I know where it went but gee I miss it. The “problem” is as follows, I now have a longer commute to work (instead of 5 minutes it is now 15 minutes) I am heading into work earlier since it is a longer bike ride and I will sweat I think it would only be nice if I did take a shower when I get there so I don’t smell up the place. Then since I am trying to pick up the Irish Tin Whistle, I have dedicated about 30 minutes a day to practise. Then, I am trying to correct a bad habit of mine, I have not really been saying prayers at night, so I have set aside about half an hour a day for that. I am working out of the Lutheran Hymnal for the service of Vespers for it, and using a supplemental book called the Daily office to go with it. So right there I have just taken about 2.5 hours out of my that I use to have, so I am trying to get every thing I use to do in, with 2.5 hours less. Oh well, maybe I should cut some things out, or maybe I have to many hobbies lets see I have

  • biking
  • keeping fish
  • Ham Radio
  • Short Wave Radio Listening
  • Police band scanning
  • Armature Photography
  • Irish Tin Whistle (a new hobby I will admit)
  • This blog (I do consider this blog a hobby)

Oh well what is life with out hobbies, and hobbies add riches to life, man I must be one of the richest people alive with the amount of hobbies I have ;-).

My Video section

Categories: Web Site
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: March 21, 2006

Does any one know of any good web aps for sharing videos, I am getting tired of child hackers defacing the phpNuke site I have, and I am thinking the best thing will be to change the video section to something else, instead of having to upload a backup of the database ever few days. Using phpNuke was the bigist mistake I ever made for that section of my web site.

Well the first day at the new job went well

Categories: Work
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: March 20, 2006

Well today was my first day at the new job, down at Union Switch and Signal. I think it went well, and I am excited about my future there. I got to meet the group of people that I will be working with today, that is always good.

My Churches Sermons are now being PodCasted

Categories: Church, Technology
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Published on: March 19, 2006

Our church is now podcasting the sermons from Sunday morning if you want to know the RSS feed for it you can get it here, just plug this into your iTunes, or what ever podcatcher you use
This is now possible, because one of the computers I built up for the church yesterday. I have moved the new Linux box from the churches NOC to the church proper, and connected the mic line to the output of the sound system.
Because of the new podcasting stuff, the audio system is now my responsibility, the previous person thinks it would be best for one person to do both, instead of 2 people dealing with the audio system. It is nice to see the hours of work I put into this computer being fruitfully, the computer itself took about 5 hours, that is install of the OS (Linux:Red Hat Fedora Core 4), configuring the system, then installing audacity and all the libs that were needed just to get audacity up and running. But it is nice to see the fruits of your work.
We still need to run a cat 5 cable from the network up to the computer, but for now, at the end of the service I will be dumping the raw audacity data to a USB key drive, to bring it home to do the work on it. That involves increasing the volume since it is so low when I do the recording. The only thing I have to figure out how to do is remove the low hum that gets into the recording, if any one has any suggestions on how to do this let me know, also remember we have a budget of $0 no more no less, so nothing involved buying any software or hardware.

Here it is almost 11 and I am just finishing up here

Categories: Church, Geekdom
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Published on: March 18, 2006

Well this has been a bit of a long day. I have setup 4 Linux computers, one was to replace the churches older file server, the only one only had 1.6Gb of disk space, and we were down to the last 2Mb, the new one has 160Gb of disk space on the partition that is going to hold the churches files. The next computer is one that was placed up near the churches audio system, this way we can record the sermons from every Sunday and podcast them (I will post a link when I get the podcast server up and running). The next computer, is one for use when I am working on other computers, it will be nice that if I am working on a problem, I can look things about it up on the web, so this one is the “research” computer so I can research things about the computers if I am stumped on the when I am fixing a computer for the church. The last computer is one for the church’s library, so that when some one from the church is using the library they can look things up on the internet, and maybe type something up in a word processor (I do have to add printer support to the system)
When I started, I thought I would give “ubuntu” a try. Big mistake, it does not let you set a root password, and for the life of me I could not figure out what the root password was, so that killed that system for being the file server, and I did not want to deal with it, I knew Red Hat, so I went with FC4 for the systems. I know it for the most part so it was just easier to deal with then trying to force a new system to work the way I think it should work. I already know the steps I take to force Red Hat to work the way I want it to work, so it was less work to do that.
I been working since 9am on the churches computers today, and here it is 11pm, and I just have to move one last computer up to the new location to get all the stuff done, then I will head home to take a nice (earned) rest (sleep sounds great at this moment to me 😉 )
Well it has been a busy day for me, so by for now, and look her tomorrow for information about the podcast that my church will be doing, I will be setting that up tomorrow.

One major problem with Linux

Categories: Geekdom, Technology
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: March 18, 2006

I love Linux, don’t get me wrong, but it does have one problem. This problem is this, if you want to install a program, you may find that you have to install more libs then you care to. Take today, I am working on getting a computer up and running for my church so we can record the sermons on it, and put them on the net in mp3 format. On my Mac at home I use a program called audacity, a very nice program to work with. So I decided that I would use it on a Linux system to do the recording. Well when I went to install it, I find out I need to install wxWindows, ok no big deal. Well then as I keep going at it I find that i have to also install 4 other libs, as I try to install one, it says it needs another so to install audacity, I had to install the following 5 libs, wxWindwos, GTK+, gLib, ATK, and finally pango. This is the problem to install one program you have to install a lot of accompanying libs (dll for those of you in the windows world) What Linux people need to do, is eather include in the build systems, or the RPM or what ever, include the libs that you will need to run the program, I am a programmer, and a computer geek, but you will never get a non-geek to use Linux if it takes hours to install a simple program, and one forth of that time is spent just searching the web for the libs you need, and the correct versions. Right now I am still working on compiling gtk+ (I have been at this for 3 hours now)
To those of you that write Linux programs, or libs, maybe consider this, people don’t what to have to search high and low for the libs they need, just package them all together so you get what you need when you are set to install a program, many end users will not have the patiences to look for all the libs they might need, heck I don’t even think they would know how to deal with this situation, if you want Joe six pack to use Linux, you will have to meet him half way. Now if you don’t want end users to use Linux, but just computer geeks, well you are well on the right path, because only a geek will take this kind of time to make things work.

Bat in the church today

Categories: Church, Random Thoughts
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: March 18, 2006

Well today, as I was working on some of the computers for the church (I am still working on them at this time) a bat got into the lecture hall. There were some of the ladies from the church in there doing some scrap booking. Well they were not to happy about the bat in the room, so I was asked if I could get it out. Well I remember from when I was in 7 and 8 grad my sister use to keep buggies, and when they would get out we would use a blanket to try to catch them. So I grabbed a blanket and started to send it in the direction the bat was as it flew by. On the 3rd shot, BINGO! the poor bat fell to the ground with the blanket. The blanket did not cover the poor animal, so I pulled the blanket back and set it back on top of the bat. At that point I let the bat out outside. Later that day I was asked why I did not kill the bat. I will have to say I can not think of hurting a poor little bat just for getting stuck in the church, it just dose not seam right to me to kill one of God’s creates for no reason, and besides I think the bat was cute.
Some of the ladies started to call me “bat man” for catching the bat.

The importance of the ADA

Categories: Random Thoughts
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: March 17, 2006

Over at John Dvorak’s blog, there was a post about movie theaters wanting to put cell phone jammers in. I know it sounds wonderful, no one talking on the cell phone during a movie, no more cell phone ringing during the movie. But before we go for it, lets think of the down side. Medical emergencies, There are those that have illnesses that might have the problem of 911 being called at any moment, and it is my understanding that every second saved could make the difference between life and death. How about something that can affect a lot of people that are not even handicapped, heart attacks, and strokes, again every second saved could make the difference between life and death or partial recovery or full recovery. I got into a debate there about how this is a bad idea, and some guy there said, first that if some one could have those problem maybe they should not go to the movies, and how does the ADA cover 911 (or phone service as he put it)
Until today I never really thought the ADA was 100% needed, but after talking with some of those people there, I can see why it is needed, some people have such a microscopic view of the world that revolves around their selves that they can not even stop for a second to think about people that have different needs. Well they did convince me of one thing, and that is that the ADA is needed, mainly because of people like them.
I know we have lived with out cell phones for a long time, but I wonder how many people’s lives could have been saved by the use of a cell phone.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY

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Published on: March 17, 2006

I hope every on e has a good St. Patrick’s day today, remember wear GREEN.

Tracking the Miles I have biked this year

Categories: Biking
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Published on: March 16, 2006

Well I tried the site that does those tracking things, but I really did not like how it is done, so I will just update the header file for my site to with the number of miles I have biked this year, as of not it is 23 miles, if you look at the top of the page next to the my logo, you will be able to see the number of miles I have done this year, I plan on keeping that up to date.

I am out of shape

Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: March 16, 2006

Today I biked up to Squall hill, then down to the Pittsburgh Irish Center for the CCE meeting, this is a group of people that meet to play music together (I don’t play, yet, I hope to be able to join them in playing in the future when I get OK with the Irish Tin Whistle) I was OK going to the place, but coming back (around 9:20pm) coming up Forward Av. I could only make it only 3/4 of the way up. I was whipped out when I got to the top of the hill, but when I got up the rest of the way I got back on and rode rest of the way home, even up Murry Av. I know tonight is going to be a really bad night with my legs.
OK maybe I should give some back info here, for the last year and a half I been having trouble with my legs, cramps and violent twitches of the legs at night, that causes them to kick very hard, I have a bit of a fear that one night I am going to wake up in major pain from a broken toe.
I am hoping that by the end of May that I can bike up Forward Av with out having to stop at all. I have in the past mastered the hill on Neville St. and the hill of Bates, and Forbes Av from Oakland to Squall Hill.

This is wrong, just pure wrong, and I don’t see how it fixes the problem.

Categories: Programming
Comments: Comments Off on This is wrong, just pure wrong, and I don’t see how it fixes the problem.
Published on: March 16, 2006

In this post I talk about how I had a problem with static variables in a class Well I have solved the problem, but the answer is wrong, just wrong. The way I solved it was call from the program area, the calls to the functions that change the value out of the second lib, into the program itself and it worked. But why does this fix the problem? I don’t know why or how, in fact I still think that the problem should not exist, but it did, and even with the problem, I don’t see the different from the static variable and static functions point of view is.
I still have the middle lib, but I just have to call the static functions that create the data from the program, but then when I am in the middle lib the data is now there for use. Go Fig, if you have any idea what was wrong, is wrong.

static members of objects

Categories: Programming
Comments: 3 Comments
Published on: March 16, 2006

I think I am going to scream. I have an object in a lib that I made, this object has a static member that I expect (as per the C++ specs) that it should be the value I set it to last time I used it. So imagine the following class.
[code]
class a
{
private:
static int A;
public:
static void setA(int v) { A = v; };
static int getA() { return A; };
// there is more stuff but these are what is important
};
[/code]
that is the .h file, now the .cpp file has
[code]
int a::A = 0;
[/code]
Now the above code is compiled up into its own .lib file (MSVC++ 6.0) Now I have another lib that is linked to the above lib and it does something like
[code]
void f()
{
a::setA(20);
}
[/code]
now lets say I have a program that links to the second lib so lets say I call the following
[code]
void main()
{
f();
cout << a::getA() << endl; } [/code] I would expect the output to be [code] 20 [/code] but the output is [code] 0 [/code] I am trying to figure out how to have the value of a::A to stay the same across the calls to the libs.

Attention all Hams and SWL

Comments: 3 Comments
Published on: March 15, 2006

Qrz is reporting that we might see a massive spike in sun spot activity. I don’t know much about how this will affect people into astronomy. But I do know that this will affect RF on earth. It will not help me on the Ham radio band since I do not work on the bands of 6 meters or below. I can work 6 meters, techs are allowed on it, but below 6 meters I can not go on legally. But here is what is exciting me, this should make listening to the Short Wave Radio fun, since the RF in these area of the bands will be able to travel better under high sunspot activity.

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