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At work, I would get calls:
At home, three times a night. Never leaving a messsage. I Googled the phone number finally and found who: Lifesource blood services. I logged in (easy) and turned off all my notifications. We’ll see if it works. I need to do some testing, so let’s try installing Windows XP Pro into a Virtual Box VM to avoid trashing my production system. Which is pretty trashed anyway, and has a big frosty pre-ordered (cheap) Windows 7 waiting when I finally get around to researching a driver for my now non-supported HP LaserJet 3150 MFP – but that is another time… Fire up VirtualBox and create a new VM. I picked the defaults except for 512M of RAM – gotta be careful to not run anything else – set the CDROM to physical drive E, and a growable HD 8Gb. The usual. Now boot the new VM with the XP Pro SP3 CD (slipstreamed from the SP2 CD). It does its thing, and hit a certain point while it is loading drivers and locks. Hard. Click the close (X) button, VBox asks do I want to reset the VM? Sure. It locks. Hard. I try to kill all the processes and then restart VBox. There is a conflict with an open semaphore file, so I check again and sure enough there is still a VBox process, which cannot be killed. I shut down, Explorer disappears. Luckily a Task Manager box is still up. Finally the “Shutting down Windows” message comes up. Off to Candlelight Ski in Rush Creek. Three hours later, it is still shutting down. I figure most of the stuff has been saved at this point – reset button it is. Now boots ok. Whew. The message implied some driver was not cooperating, and I questioned the USB stuff. So I run through the options and turn off any non-vital hardware. Audio, USB, no 3D acceleration. Restart the VM and the install. Now (the upgrade) asks for a previous version CD. Find my copy of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. Yes. Set networking to Bridged and run the install. Works great. Moral: turn off all the extra hardware. You can add it later. Or not. I sure don’t need to. So I wanted to buy the sheet music for “Lust” by Tori Amos. I love the piano music and wanted to learn it – to play, not to sing. I started with Google, found several music sites, and prepared to pay. Seems to be about $4.50. Ok, I can deal with that. Started with I had purchased “Time out of Mind” by Steely Dan and “Holly and the Ivy” by George Winston using the Solara viewer from FreeHand Music. They don’t have the piece. Fair enough. Then off to Musicroom, where I found the pience, changed currency to USD then signed up, and then found that I could not by that item from the US. Thanks for telling me up front! I love wasting time! Then finally, I did a new Google search, found Musicnotes.com and installed yet another stupid viewer. I was able to finally purchase it and print it. What a waste of time. Until the publishers and artists finally decide to let us get whatever we want whenever we want it EASILY for a fair price, the piracy will continue. In the meantime, have fun in bankruptcy. So I started the teapot up today, and went downstairs to check one thing. Ten minutes later I came up and there was no whistle. After checking the teapot, there was no water. With our old crappy teapot, I wouldn’t care. Let it cool down, whatever. Of course this teapot is a 19/10 stainless teapot from the Eva Zeisel by Chantal collection, interestingly no longer sold (although the enamel clad one is). We inherited it from Aunt Lynn, and she liked nice stuff, and it is beautiful. After I cooked it, not so much.  This is the teakettle I destroyed.
Nice. The flame was on real low, since I knew I wasn’t sitting there, so maybe the damage is not bad. Another post recommended Bar Keeper’s Friend. It has saved me before, as it is a very nice fine abrasive. Another post says the metal is damaged beyond repair, and the wife will kill me. Well, the post didn’t really say that, I did. So I started polishing with some BKF with a few drops of water, and used my clean hands. Luckily, most of the discoloration came off, except near the bottom, probably where the heat was highest. Good thing I a) caught it soon, and b) used low heat. Some of the burnt crust came off too, so it really looks good now. The teakettle itself is nice, but not as functional as the cheapy. You could operate the cheapy with one hand, you need to remove the Chantal plug with your hand without getting burned by steam. Get used to it. It does not whistle reliably, either. B**ch, b**ch, b**ch. SO I have } The Mockito doc “Real Partial Mocks” says to do this:
we get the error
After 1/2 hour of hunting I found a hint, and refactored:
Our Sarah’s High School friend Sara Jean performed with Tom Schraeder and His Ego on Dec 28th at Schuba’s Tavern in Chicago. She had done this before last year and I had asked her to tell us when she would be preforming again. She Facebooked me and since both Bette and I were on vacation the week between Xmas and New Year’s, we went for it. We got a cheapish ($90) room at the Hampton Inn at 33 W Illinois (careful though, taxes are an automatic $15 and overnight valet parking was $42!!!) THe hotel is a nice place, with a Prarie style decor in the small lobby and the usual Hampton coffee bar and free breakfast. After checking in and grabbing some coffee, we head to the room to read and have a bit of a nap. My cell phone goes off at 5:30, and we are off to Elizabeth and Nick’s. They live north of Belmont on Ashland in a new condo. We cab to the place – Lake Shore Drive is backed up a bit, and traffic on Belmont is terrible, so cab fare is over $20 with tip – and find the buzz box. We are buzzed in. ON the 3rd floor, none of the apartments are marked with a letter. Elizabeth calls us on our cell, and we say “we are in the hall!”. She opens the door. Guess the association does not want condos marked… THeir condo has lovely dark brown wood, 15 foot exposed concrete ceilings, and a couple of bathrooms, but at 1200 sq ft, it is not huge. But it is nice, and overlooks Ashland. THe kitchen is modern, small and would be a galley kitchen but the space between the kitchen and living room is open with a granite counter. Nice. We are served hors d’oeurvres and wine. The door knocks, and it is Chellie. She was let it by a resident, who gave her explicit instructions on how to get to the apartment — “2nd door in the left”. We visit an hour and grab a cab for the 3 blocks to Schubas at Southport and Belmont. I tip the cabbie well – we could have easily walked. It is an old bar, lots of dark wood. My parents seem to remember going there back in the day. We have dinner. I had the Texas chili, listed with the veggie chili mac. Bette and Chellie have salads. We get sweet potato fries and a small mac-and-cheese (house specialty), which is free, when you prebuy tickets on line as we did. It is also 1/2 price wine night, so Chellie and Bette split a bottle of a French Sauvignon Blanc. I got a Guinness. The fries are thick, not the thin curly ones everyone has. The Mac is hot and good. Bus staff keeps up with plates and water is refilled. When our entrees come, the salads are wonderful, but my chili is just – no mac. I want mac. They give me a plate of buttered macaroni with a name for $5. Yow. So we finish, and the line at the will-call is building. At 8:30P one band is still doing a sound check and our entry is delayed. We head back with the leftover wine, stamp our hands and Chellie pays her cover. I get a Goose Island IPA for $5.50 and we head for the church pews along the south side of the room. On the north (Belmont) side are some small tables with a few chairs; these are filled (the reason for the line). A line of coat hooks is behind our pew, people are hanging coats. The center of the floor is bare. You expect a Christmas pageant to break out at any time. The first act is Dick Prall, who, as it turns out, is performing his last gig at Schuba’s before he goes on hiatus. (As his going away present, I bought two of his CDs for $10.) I really liked him, and I have since found some concerts from Schuba’s from 2005 on Rhapsody and have enjoyed them. The next act is John Henry & the Engine from St Louis. Eh. The lead singer kind of moans and is not 1/2 the vocalist Dick is. The band is good, and they have an electric fiddler which is cool. Chellie leaves; we give her cab fare. We are glad we brought our earplugs. Between acts, Bette sees a girl that could be Sara. I walked up to her and saw her tattoos on her arm — it is indeed Sara. I say hi and she gives me a big hug and comes over to Bette. We chat for a while; then she must prepare. At 11PM, Tom (and Sara) come out with the other zillion members of the band. Sara has a wonderful voice, but at times is way down in the mix so is hard to hear. But she is having fun, and so did we. I have listened to Tom’s music on Rhapsody, and was familiar with some of the songs. He makes very interested facial expressions up on stage! One song brought all the bands from the evening up on stage – that was fun. Post show, we said our byes, cabbed back to the hotel. Next morning, headed down to the free breakfast — big mistake! Crowded, food ok but nothing good, loud — we should have gone out. As we walked down to river afterwards, and later when we were driving out Ontario toward 90, we passed a bunch of places we could have breakfasted. Nuts. Next time. Let us know, Sara… Our latest addition to the Chwalisz family of bloggers: Our Other Sara(h) blogs about life, love and adventure on the Continent. Finally dumping my D-Link DSB-H4 USB powered hub. I think I got it for 10 bucks, and I think it worked for about 20 minutes. Then as soon as you plug something in, all the lights would go black and I would fear for my motherboard. I just marked it with “US” and tossed it into the electronics recycling pile. Adios. *US. “Unserviceable”, a military, probably Canadian or English forces, since I heard it from a crotchety old Englishman while working in a laundry plant in London, Ontario, Canada many years ago – or about 1982. Alan, the chief engineer of the plant, marked one of our dead RSPE Light-Frame counters with US. I didn’t get it. He was a good guy. We had fun drinking after work. Get the storage folder; redirect the domain there; Get the code into the target dir: Copy wp-config.php Get new secret keys: Edit wp-config.php Run config: Set up the profile pages; add default user; Install Atahualpa Theme and configure.
More Info: Or as Cousin Mike puts it – “Joe versus the volcano. My brother Joe’s 10 seconds of fame….” Joe:
Most scientists labor in obscurity. May Joe be a little less obscure now. Uncle Hank is very proud of his boy. Some short quiet videos with ominous rumblings from magma exploding 100 feet away. |
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Copyright © 2010 Dave Page - All Rights Reserved |
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