What's a Delmer Look Like?

June 28, 2008

Cat 6 for Gigabit Ethernet

I'm certain I've mentioned that I work for the best company in the world. It is very family friendly. My co-workers are brilliant.

To top it off, I have the best job ever. And I love everything about my job.

Except running cable. And I'm not even sure what I don't like about it. It could be all the ladder work. Or the crap falling out of the ceiling onto me (insulation and chunks of ceiling tile) and how it sticks to me as I invariably work up a sweat. Or all the shit in the ceiling area I have to work around.

The job itself is really rather simple. Well, sometimes feeding the drops down the wall can be a bitch.

Anyway, I spent part of today running Cat 6 cable (for gigabit Ethernet) to some of the Engineering stations. I'm very happy with the way everything went except for the hole I put in the wall for the jacks. I ran four drops and bought a four-jack faceplate. I also purchased mounting rings (I've seen them called mud rings and they give you something easy to mount a faceplate to) in standard size (like a regular wall outlet) and double size. Since I had a four-jack faceplate I made a hole — the perfect frikkin' size, I might add — for a double-size wall plate.

Naturally, the four-jack faceplate is the size of a regular wall switch.

Poop.

Technorati Tags: Cat 6, Networking, Sweating

Posted by delmer at 10:41 PM | Comments (6)

June 26, 2008

More on DBBE

As part of Delmer's Big Blog Experiment, I've removed the sidebars, leaving the blog with a look even more boring than before.

I'd goofed, it seems, and MikeO pointed out that sidebars were coming up with comments. More research showed they were coming up in the various archive templates as well. All of that has now been removed and we'll see what tomorrow's count comes in at.

Please excuse the mess.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Posted by delmer at 4:33 PM | Comments (7)

June 25, 2008

DBBE -- Trashing Sidebars

You're probably aware that I keep track of one or two things in my life. I can't explain why it is I track some of the things I do aside from curiosity. Others, like my blood work, are sort of important and make me feel like a helper when I share that info.

Lately I've wondered how many people are reading the blog. And not necessarily because I need to know but because there are three tools I use to track it and none of them agree with each other.

I guess I'm really more interested in which one is more accurate and how they can differ so much from one another than how many people stop by here. (Which is not to say I don't love each and every one of you. The women just a little more than the men, if you must know.)

One of the tools suggests that X readers come by each day. Once says X plus or minus 20% of X and the other says about 4X. 

The tool that provides X also provides some other data and based on the info it provides and things I know for a fact, it is missing several people.

I could get into a whole lot of analysis, some of it brilliant sounding while incredibly flawed, but instead I think we'll move on to what I'm calling Delmer's Big Blog Experiment. (With modest apologies to Sara.)

The experiment will try to make all the tools more closely match each other and provide more accurate data:

In order to know the exact count of readers I'll need each one of you to do something for me. No, not comment; I wouldn't ask you to expose yourself like that. Instead I'd like you to drop a dollar in the mail (or something more colorful if you are from one of the outlying countries) to me c/o Mel's Diner in Hilliard, Ohio. If you're like me, a dad with kids, you may not have a dollar; a ten or a twenty will work just fine — I'll do the conversion.

There's a thought that some of the things that rotate images on the blog skew the stats high on the tool that provides 4X. Okay, this is my thought as I've got 3 things that rotate images: Granny Gallery, My Kids, and Boobiethon, and the weather widget. Theres also that Blogosphere item. I'm going to disable some of those bits to see what happens. The tool that provides the 4X count also provides a far greater number of search-terms-used info than either of the other tools. It also gives me bandwith data. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I make changes. [Update -- I've decided to simply remove the sidebars.]

We'll be photo-free during the experiment.

So there we have it. You'll be sending in a dollar. I'll be changing the blog.

Together we'll get to the bottom of this.

 

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Hilliard, Mel's Diner, Statistics

Posted by delmer at 11:49 AM | Comments (10)

June 18, 2008

Update to Tale of Tech Support

This was in my mail a little bit ago. I found it after I posted the earlier entry.

 

Dear DELMER WELLS,   

Your satisfaction is essential to Company X's continued success. We are determined to earn your confidence as a trusted advisor that can help you unify, simplify and securely manage your infrastructure for greater business results.   

Our records show that your issue XXXXXX -Y "CONSUMER PRODUCT ISSUE" has been resolved. We hope you had a good experience working with our team. If you would like to review your issue, please go to: Our Web Address XXXX. Please note, you will need to have an account and may be prompted to log in prior to viewing the issue.   

We hope you will invest about 5 minutes to tell us how well we are performing against your expectations.   

 

 You've got to be kidding me. 

Wait it gets better: 

I went to the vendor site, logged int, and could see the case they've asked me to take a survey about. When I click on it I'm told I don't have permission to view it and that I'm to fill in the "highlighted fields below." Naturally, the page (in IE and Firefox) is blank except for the notice that I need to fill in the highlighted fields below.

Technorati Tags: Software, Tech Support

Posted by delmer at 9:08 AM | Comments (3)

Tales of Tech Support

Yesterday I needed to call Tech Support for a new product we're installing. The new product replaces and existing product that works just fine and and costs no more than the old, discontinued, product renewal would have cost. 

During the installation the new product prompted me for a license file that I'd not yet gotten as I hadn't expected to need one as I hadn't needed one for the old product. 

I'd purchased 70 licenses of the old product and used 68 of them; so really, there was no reason to monitor our usage (I know others are not as honest.) We've purchased 85 licenses for the new product, just in case we grow. [This does point to the reason the old product is being replaced; so I can be watched more closely]

I opened the manual that came with TNP and was directed to download the newest version of the Registration Program. This had a familiar look and feel to it and it was my recollection that I'd fill stuff out and receive the file I needed via the web or e-mail.

The Registration Program told me "Choose Your Product."

Alas, my product wasn't listed.

Fortunately, I had an option to phone them and the Registration Program provided the number I needed. So I called and a cheerful voice answered to tell me, "You have reached a non-working Company X phone number. Please call ... etc."

So I called that number and a cheerful voice answered and said, "Thank you for calling Company X. If you are calling about This or That, press one. If you are calling about The Other Thing press two." As I was calling about This I pressed one and a cheerful voice came on the line and said, "For help with product This please call ..."

So I called the new number and a cheerful voice answered with a prompt that I would not have expected to receive for the product This. This was followed by a modestly cheerful fellow picking up the phone and expressing some dumbfoundedness over why I'd be asking him the questions I was asking. He suggested I call a new number.

And I did. And a cheerful voice came on and told me my wait was less than 15 minutes. You know how I am about countable nouns, but I'm never really sure if that applies to time. I should probably look it up. Fewer than 15 minutes. Minutes are nouns, but they're sort of etherial.

In any case I said, screw this and pressed "resubmit" on the software I was trying to get work. Oh, I left this out of the above. The Registration Software claimed to have the ability to get my customer number — which is not one of the 100 numbers included on the License Program Certificate that came with the software — but it was balking. At the "less than 15 minutes" noticed I pressed "resubmit" for the 10th time and it worked. [Another aside: I finally checked on how current the newest version of the Registration Software was … it was published in 2000.)

So I hung up, thinking I was making progress.

I wasn't. Getting my customer number was the only thing the software could do and it gagged just after I hung up the phone.

I said "fuck" mostly to myself and then got the cheap ass little "manual" that came with the software. AHA! There were more numbers in the back — and one of them said Licensing Information! How could I have been so stupid not to have seen it?!

I gave it a call and a cheerful voice answered and said, "You have reached a non-working Company X phone number if ..." and the voice continued but I'd pretty much lost interest and hung up after tossing a John McCainism at the phone. [Perhaps not, but I read about the McCainism at Eriepressible and thought I'd reference it.]

I called the "Less than 15 Minutes Number" again and it was picked up right away. I had a very nice conversation with a gentleman who suggested several things that would have made a lot of sense had they matched the screen prompts the software had given me. As a matter of fact, during my troubleshooting I'd tried many times to get just the screen prompts he thought I might be getting to come up but couldn't get the software to move past "browse for file."

He transferred me to a pleasant sounding woman and I told her my tale of woe. After just a second's reflection she said I needed to speak with someone higher up the Tech Support chain and said she'd transfer me.

Naturally, and if you've ever had to work with Tech Support before this will come as no surprise, instead of transferring me, she hung up.

The photo on this page is of my garage before I moved in. The reason I'm showing it is when I was looking for a photo I saw this one and wondered what the hell it was. The garage looks nowhere near this clean now — I'm hoping this photo might inspire me to get rid of the motorcycle that's taking up so much room. 

Technorati Tags: Software, Tech Support

Posted by delmer at 7:32 AM | Comments (2)

June 8, 2008

How Addicted

I just popped over to Michael Gorey's site and found he'd borrowed the Flickr Photo Meme from me (I, naturally, had borrowed it from someone else).

I'm repaying the favor by borrowing the How Addicted to Blogging Are You test;

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Created by OnePlusYou 

And now I'm out to play in the sunshine. 

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Meme, Blogs

Posted by delmer at 11:04 AM | Comments (3)

June 7, 2008

Flickr Photo Meme

I'm a bit ill still and somewhat tired. The boys and I have had a big day which featured me spending a lot of money… and right now I wish I were sleeping. So I've decided to steal the meme that everybody else is stealing from each other. In all fairness, it was more work than I thought it would be.

The concept:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?

1. IL-Johnston City-Delmer's neon, 2. simple salad : home, 3. Franklin Park Conservatory, 4. When I'm sleeping, I slow down my breathing...Living in dreams, dreams that come true...thinking of the color blue... ZZZzzzzzz..., 5. Courtney Thorne-Smith, 6. Darth Vader and a Storm Trooper Cooling off in a Glass of Diet Pepsi, 7. Belgium Bicycle, 8. chocolate chip cookie dough, 9. one with the sea, 10. Boys at Mel's, 11. Bigger than the Beatles, 12. My Father's Truck 

My explanations for the above:

1. My name is Delmer

2. I'm eating a lot of salads; I like them. I typically have grilled chicken in them

3. I went to Franklin High School. Coincidentally, Franklin Park Conservatory isn't too far from where I live.

4. I like the color blue.

5. Courtney Thorne-Smith.

6. I had a picture here of an old Pepsi and Coke machine sitting side-by-side. They didn't come out in the mosaic so I chose another picture.

7. Bicycling across Europe would be fun. Or Australia. Canada. Just about any place Americans aren't currently actively hated.

8. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Vanilla is very good too.

9. I typed in "happy." A cute brunette with wet and salty feet isn't necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when I think "happiness," but I'm willing to give it a shot.

10. I typed in "Haydn Jack Sam." Can you believe it?! One of my own photos came up!

11. I typed in "tall."

12. My Flickr name turned up zero hits. I split it into two words and like this photo.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Flickr, Meme

Posted by delmer at 8:49 PM | Comments (5)

May 31, 2008

Geek Squad on Two Wheels

I decided to make today an automobile-free day. Which isn't really a big deal, I guess, unless you consider I wanted to get some things done as well.

I normally start my child-free weekends with ten or fifteen minutes of crying due to sadness. I only mention this as I'd like my boys to be aware of it should one of them happen across this entry at some point in his life after falling into a big pile of money (which, hopefully, raises his gullibility quotient).

The crying always makes me a bit peckish and following some tear wiping, nose blowing, and hand washing, I'll head off for breakfast.

Today breakfast was all the more sweet as I had a coupon for Hometown Buffet. I have video of the meal but haven't loaded the editing software on the new hard drive so you'll just have to trust me when I say it was spectacular (I chose my breakfast based on (1) nutritional content and (2) how it would look in the video — I am the Sam Peckinpah of morning meals).

If you are curiouis, Hometown Buffet is about five miles from where I live.

During breakfast my buddy Paul called. He'd asked me to do some computer work for him and I told him I'd zip over when I was done eating. As I worked my way through a second helping of scrambled eggs I plotted my route. While I knew I'd end up on Riverside Drive (which doesn't have the safest feel to it) I calculated that my time on it would be short enough that the chances of getting smashed would be rather small.

Paul and I made a trip to the computer store (his car, so I still count is as automobile-free for me), installed a new optical drive (which sounds so much more professional than "installed a DVD burner") and then went out to a late lunch (um, more driving in his car).

The skies got a bit ugly after we finished eating and I made a hasty, windy-as-hell, retreat toward the house. All told I put in just under 21 miles — and it was on The Mighty Schwinn (I have a big honkin' lock that fits on the Schwinn's rack … I lack a locking-it-up scheme for the new bike.)

I got home just in time to have a big nap, followed by a sandwich, then bed.

 

Technorati Tags: Cycling, Friends

Posted by delmer at 8:17 AM | Comments (6)

May 29, 2008

There is so much to tell you

We'll start with this: For the third time in about as many months I'll be reloading everything on my notebook computer. Last night I shut the computer down at the end of work, using Start/Shut Down and when I tried to fire it up before bedtime, to catch up on blogs, I got "A disk read error occurred." Ah well.

In other news, last night as I was grilling chicken I heard a noise that would most likely be described as a child dragging a giant plastic ramp around. It would sound especially like that if you had an awareness that I had a giant plastic ramp in the back of the minivan and a child who, before I'd pulled up, that had been using a 2x4 as a small ramp.

And that would have been the boy I'd had X-rayed the day before and who had gone to school on crutches just that morning.

"Samson," I said. "Get away from that ramp!"

"Why?"

"Because I've made all the trips to Urgent Care I plan to make this week." I told him.

"But we won't have to go to Urgent Care," he said. And this was news to me. I hadn't realized Samson possessed any sort of internal Urgent-Care-scheduling mechanism. Had I known about it beforehand, and assuming he has a quota that needs to be met, I'd have certainly requested a non-Memorial-Day-evening injury.

"You'll be going to Mom's on Friday. You can do your ramp jumping then." And instead I took him to the small dirt track at the park so he could jump hills that would result in falls on hard-packed dirt instead of concrete.

(When I took him to school yesterday morning, on crutches, some of his buddies saw him hobbling up and said "Samson! Don't worry, we'll help you just like you helped us." It was very cute.)

Finally, this morning I drove the boys to school; I thought it would be a nice thing to do as this is their last school week with me. As I drove down Davidson, doing 42 in a 35 zone but not close to anybody, a guy got on my bumper. And I'm not kidding -- he was closer than anybody's been for as long as I can remember.

As you know I don't like tailgaters and if I'm speeding and being tailgated will slow down. So I slowed to 37 (which was still speeding). You may also remember I've adjusted one of the squirters on my windshield wipers and will sometimes give people a squirt if I'm in the mood. Since this guy didn't back off, I gave him a shot. This caused him to drop back.

It also caused him to express his displeasure over my displeasure of his tailgating to the point that he flashed his lights at me. And let me take this moment to say that in a world in which one person squirts and another person flashes his lights when the early morning sun is blasting into the auto's windshields ... the squirter wins (by my scoring, anyway).

We both made a right turn at the light and, because God loves me, turned into the school and made our ways to the child drop-off zone; we were cars one and two.

Leaving the school grounds we both took a left.

And he got nowhere near me.

Posted by delmer at 8:50 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

May 6, 2008

Tequilacon 2008 - More

I sort of jumped ahead with yesterday's story of Tequilacon and during that jumping-aheadness made a mental note to come back and mention something I thought was pretty important. And I'll be damned if I can remember what it was.

So let's make a quick stop to the night before as there is something I forgot to say about that.

As you know I see a therapy person who is helping me to overcome my fear of using stainless steel cutlery. And while that's not really why I see her it's close enough for the blog and will keep the other Tequilacon attendees from forming any damn-that-was-close worries. Anyway, a group of us were sitting around on Friday and I felt the need to say, "my therapist" before I gave a  thought to what this might suggest to people. I didn't want anybody to worry for or feel sorry for me.

Pausing, I asked, "Is anybody else here seeing a therapist?"

About 80% of the hands went up. (And I think we all felt worry and sorrow for the 20% who were therapist-free.)

Moving forward to Saturday…

All of the Tequilacon attendees were presented with lanyards that had been beautifully designed and artfully crafted by Dave. Those of us with sufficiently low Dave Numbers were also presented with buttons (that look way better than my poor photography indicates).

Other swag included condoms packaged with Avitable's likeness and a lovely kitchen magnet from the lovely Miss Britt. I also have a CD of Tequilacon songs that Jen handed to me, but I'm fuzzy on who put the compilation together. (It was late in the evening and I'd had more than one Brooklyn Brown Ale in me.)

I took an Ohio State University shirt that I gave to Jen (for her masterful work in keeping the TC list) and for Dave I took an OSU shirt, OSU lunch bag, and a Scarlet and Gray Magic Scarf (that is apparently so magicky, so scarfy and so well known that not only does it have a website but when I mentioned I'd given it to Dave both Greeneyezz and Hilly* said, "You mean the one that ... etc.)"

[*Please note that where I say "Hilly" in the above paragraph, it could have been Hello Haha Narf, Finn, Shelli, LibraGirl, Christine, Jan, Lisa or New York City Watchdog. Please refer to my note about Brooklyn Brown Ale.]

The Best Thing About Tequilacon: There is really not just one best thing. It was all great. Everybody was so incredibly nice, friendly and had interesting stories to tell. I wish I could have talked longer to more people.

Not surprisingly, despite some of the things we all say on our blogs, it was not an orgy of foul-mouthedness.

The Most Unsettling Thing About Tequilacon: For the longest while it looked like I was going to be the oldest person there. And not just by a little. It was going to be 47-year old me and then a bunch of people in their late 20's and early 30's. Fortunately I'd eventually meet Mr. Geeky Geeky Tai Tai who was kind enough to be several years older than I am. I also learned that blogging keeps a person young as several of the people I'd thought to be in their early to mid 30s were a couple-several years older. And that was before any Brooklyn Brown Ale.

Technorati Tags: Tequilacon

Posted by delmer at 11:17 AM

May 5, 2008

Tequilacon 2008 - Saturday Night

Saturday afternoon found me filled with a sense of dread when, as I passed a business named "Mr. Chicken," I was reminded that I'd baked a pan of chicken thighs Thursday night and that I'd forgot to wrap and put in the fridge. I'd had every intention of letting them cool in the oven for ten minutes but as I did the math Saturday morning it hit me that a day and a half had passed and that it would be Sunday about midnight before I could get to them. I wasn't too concerned about the thighs putting off any sort of smell in the 72 hours they'd be "cooling," -- I'd tossed the package they'd come in into garbage I'd forgotten to take out and was sure that smell would outclass any other that was lingering in the house -- I just don't like the idea of wasting food and there's no way I'm going to be eating those things.

[Due to some serious work things today and some bike riding tonight I'm a bit behind. This is posted as a Sunday entry but I'm "tweaking" it Monday night. When I got home the house did not smell and the pan of thighs looked pretty good. I'd considered that they'd been in an oven that I'd heated to 405F and that was sealed sort of — it isn't waterproof, but it isn't like the thighs were sitting outside. Anyway, I took a bite of one of the thighs to see how it was (I'd call it a bit dry) and then I spit it out into the garbage as I wasn't positive that eating meat that had been unrefrigerated for three days was a good idea.)

A short time later the sense of dread passed and was replaced with a sense of wonder as I stepped into the North Bowl Lounge and Lanes.

I've got to admit that I was a little concerned when I'd heard that Tequilacon was going to be held in a bowling alley as it sounded like an ass kicking waiting to happen: a bunch of geeks getting together to party in a bowling alley which is the native habitat of the American redneck. I'd even gone so far as to suggest that Black Belt Mama show up in her black belt (called a Karman to those of us in the know) and robe (or Ghia) just in case we needed some protection.

The North Bowl and Lounge and Lanes, as it turned out, was the perfect venue. It was more like a really nice bar with a bowling alley downstairs. Perhaps that's why "Lounge" comes first in the name.

The upstairs lounge part of the North Bowl was overrun by the Tequilacon crew and a few other people that seemed to be very unredneck-like and who were being watched over by Jen's mom. I know this because, upon seeing Dave digging into a plate of something I thought I'd go grab a plate of the obviously-free snacks myself. But first I'd get a beer. And it was while I was standing waiting to order my beer that Jen's mom came over.

"I'm Jen's mother," said the tiny, elderly lady with a hint of German in her accent.

"From Run Jen Run?" I asked, genuinely surprised. I'd talked to Jen and she hadn't mentioned her mother being there but it isn't like Jen and I were super-duper extra-tight pals. I was pretty sure there were a lot of things Jen hadn't told me and maybe she was afraid I'd ask her mom to carry me around on her back if she let it slip she was there. I'd met Dustin earlier and knew his mother was playing an active role in Tequilacon, so why not Jen's mom? 

"No. I'm Jen's mother?" repeated the tiny elderly lady, in a tone that showed incredible patience for a person of Germanic ancestory.

"From Run Jen Run? I restated, assuming she'd misunderstood me.

"No. Jen and David. The bride and groom."

"Is this a wedding party in this part of the lounge?" I asked with genuine surprise,  "I might be in the wrong place."  And I was which was verified by a wave and a "you're supposed to be down here" from Hello Haha Narf and a polite "yes you are" from the barmaid. I was so glad I hadn't gotten snacks first. (I was able to order snacks from our part of the lounge… which was soo much better and cooler and full of more fun people than the wedding party part. Though I will say that Jen's mom seemed nice.)

(I am really really tired and there is a lot more to say and it is one a.m. Tuesday morning despite the time stamp on this. AND I was simply going to download this off my PDA and post it, but it needed two-seconds tweaking and now more than an hour has passed. So, I'll finish later.)

Technorati Tags: Tequilacon

Posted by delmer at 4:19 AM

May 4, 2008

Tequilacon 2008 - Friday

Friday night I had a 6:15 flight to Philly. As I was through security by 5 p.m. I thought I'd start my mini vacation by having a beer. And then a shot of tequila and then another beer. I did this while sharing a table with a blond gal (a chemist) who was on her way to Denver to take a mini vacation of her own.

The plane boarded on time (by the way, USAirways, despite the assurance that using my USAirways Mastercard to pay for tickets would get me on the plane faster, I still boarded in zone 4) and we were up and soaring in a manner that suggested we'd hit Philly early or at least on time. To celebrate I ordered two beers from the flight attendant. The flight was great and, aside from the person sitting in one of the seats near me that kept farting every 90 seconds (take a shit before you board people!) problem-free. [Oh, I should probably mention that an infant, one seat behind me and in the next row, squalled the whole flight. About half-way into the flight I realize he'd been squalling the whole almost nonstop but that I hadn't paid him too much mind. And then I wondered if crying babies don't bother me because I'm a father or if it was something else. Maybe the four beers and the shot.]

It took me longer to get to the hotel from the airport than it took me to get to Philly from Columbus. Part of this was due to the fact I have tremendous patience and part was due to the fact I'm an idiotic traveler. None of it had to do with alcohol as it all wore off during the wait. Without droning on too much just let me say that the Liberty Shuttle does not pick up people at the same place the hotel shuttles make collections.

I'd given New York City Watchdog a call after check-in and he told me that he and some other bloggers (none of whom I'd ever met) were at the Sheraton.

I'll point out for the people who have never been to Philly that the roads are a little f*cked up. At least in the Center City area. To save some virtual ink I won't say much more other than in my walk to the Sheraton I crossed the street several blocks from the hotel in order to take a direct line to it. As I walked closer I found that the street crossing actually took me a block too far to one side and I had to cross back even though it was clear when I initially crossed that without that first crossing I'd have passed it on the opposite side. I'm sure this doesn't make sense as you read it but as I briefly mentioned the "challenging walk" I'd had from my hotel a well-dressed Sheraton managerial-type said, "You sort of had to triple back, didn't you."

The NYC Watchdog had told me the group was in the restaurant so I went there first. I noticed a room with 14 or so people right next to the hostess station and asked her, "Do you know anythings about the clowns in there?" She didn't but said I could stick my head in. So I did.

I opened the door, stepped in, and things got quiet. I looked at NYCWD, pointed in recognition and called him by his first name. I gave Avitable a point and mentioned him by his name and made the same gesture/verbalization toward Miss Britt and Hilly. My thought was that since I'd just had NYCWD on the phone he might be expecting me and might have told some others that I was on my way.

As it was somebody, I think Midnight Cliff, looked up and asked, "And who are you?"

"I'm Delmer," I said. Not because I have Cher-syndrome, that is I don't think I'm deserving of a one-word-name identity, but because I thought it would be enough. Very few people find themselves in the position of having to wonder "But which 'Delmer' are you." And these people should have seen the Tequilacon Roster and at least recognized the name; how many Delmer's could they be waiting for?

What I didn't realize was that this group of bloggers had been making a bit of noise and had been threatened with getting tossed out of the restaurant. When I stuck my head in they thought I was a bouncer (and a very self-confident one as this was a mean-looking group of people).

A second or two later my obvious harmlessness won them over and Karl welcomed me to Tequilacon.

[My apologies for the lack of links and the abrupt ending. I'm at Philly airport and we board in about 10 minutes. I'm out of time. Yes, this is posted as Saturday's entry, but I'm writing it Sunday night.]

Technorati Tags: Tequilacon

Posted by delmer at 4:12 AM

April 26, 2008

Dreaming of Bloggers

The last two nights I've dreamed of other bloggers.

Wednesday night I dreamed about New York City Watchdog. I'd say I've just come across his blog recently, NYCW is going to Tequilacon and I've been reading the blogs of the attendees, but I'd actually stumbled across it at some point in the past as I remembered his cartoon character.

Anyway, in the dream I'd left a comment and he'd replied. His reply was, "You need to install an installer." This was put in the context of a Linux computer and made some sense in the dream.  

Awake, it's sort of hard to tie together, though I've been working on a Linux box and having trouble getting a cron job to run (the solution came to me as I drove to lunch Friday). And of course, there's the Windows Installer.

Thursday night I dreamed about Kazaa, who happens to be getting married today and is unlikely to see this post. In the dream a car had broken down on a long stretch of road.  Kazaa was driving and when I went to help said she needed to get to Adelaide.

What's odd is that if Thursday morning you'd asked me to name all the Australian cities I could I never would have come up with Adelaide. I'd have been able to give you Perth, Sydney (with two 'y's), Canberra, Young (they have, or had, a pet store/porn shop) Kalgoorlie and Melbourne.  

Searching Kazaa's site turns up Adelaide in 2005 and 2003.  I knew how to spell Adelaide without looking it up, so I've seen it and somehow remembered it.

So, why Kazaa? I'm reading Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country" which is about Australia (I'll bet he mentions Adelaide in the book). Thursday morning I was at McDonald's and came across a story about the World's Lego Building Champion and held on to it so I could comment about it to Kazaa (she's a pretty good Lego builder herself). Thursday night I was catching up on my blog reading, noticed the Kazaa's site doesn't update in my reader and felt guilty for not having read her for a while; she was one of the first blogs I read and one of the first to comment on my blog.

Posted by delmer at 12:24 AM | Comments (1)

April 22, 2008

I've seen this elsewhere

And wanted to have one of my own.

Your Slogan Should Be

Delmer. It's What's for Dinner.

 

 

For the record, I'm available for dinner most nights. Every other week I'll be bringing three additional diners with me.

Posted by delmer at 3:34 PM | Comments (8)

April 20, 2008

Shirts

Tequilacon is coming up in a couple of weeks and in preparation I ordered a couple of shirts from Land's End.  In order to make them super geeky I had delmer.com embroidered on each one — above the pocket on one shirt and on the left sleeve of the other (as I'm a Democrat). I paid an extra five bucks which I thought was pretty reasonable.

They arrived in the mail on several days ago.

As I was driving the eldest boy home from track practice I told him about the shirts and the ordering process.

"Wait," he said, stopping me. "You bought a couple of polo shirts and had delmer.com put on them so you could wear them to Philly to meet with a bunch of other people that write blogs?"

"Well, yea."

"Dad," he said, drawing it out so that it was more like daaaaad!, "You've got to get a life!"

Given the way the conversation turned out I wasn't sure telling him that going to Philadelphia was an attempt at having a life.

Posted by delmer at 1:14 AM | Comments (5)

April 18, 2008

I'm Awake

At 5:40 this morning I was awakened by a happy dog jumping up on my bed and sniffing around. They were quick, short sniffs and the bed was vibrating slightly as if his tail were going back and forth rapidly.

There's nothing wrong with this, except I don't own a dog and I don't have a dog visiting.

Awake, I leaned up in bed listening to the sniffing and trying to sort it out. It could have been rain lightly falling. I even made sure I was awake and that the bed was still slightly vibrating in a happy-dog way; it seemed to be and I keened my ear for the sound of things rattling against the wall in the manner of a small earthquake. Or maybe something slightly swaying back and forth on the wall in a way that would make a sniffing-dog noise.

And I got up.  There was no rain falling. I've checked online news and nothing yet about earthquakes.

I don't know what it was.

I refuse to believe that after 2.5 years in this house it's suddenly haunted by a happy dog.

Hey, just as I was getting ready to post this I did one more check.

Earthquake!

 

Posted by delmer at 5:52 AM | Comments (8)

April 10, 2008

Tequilacon 2008

So, I was over at Run Jen Run looking at what I thought were her Festivus photos when I came to a picture that had me puzzled:  I couldn't decide if it was a shot of Jen participating in Feats of Strength or shot of Vahid in the midst of the Airing of Grievances.  

Upon giving the photos a more thorough examination, something I'm typically reluctant to do, I found they weren't from Festivus at all; they were from Tequilacon 2007.

And they made Tequilacon look rather exciting. I mean, I can't remember the last time a woman hauled me around on her back.

Perhaps you'll recall when I said "remind me to tell you what my therapist said to do."  

Recently I've noticed that in too many of my therapy sessions I find myself saying, "my blog," or "a blog I read" or "someone I know in an online forum."  And sometimes when I say things like that I feel like an incredible nerd.  (Of course, without my online life my hormone problem wouldn't have been sorted out when it was.  But that's a whole other thing.)

What my therapist told me was get out and start doing things with real people. This was advice she'd given me before and that I had taken to heart; she has since told me that stuffing singles down a G-string is not what she had in mind and further clarified that she meant 100% real people; no silicon.

Well… I wondered, what's a person to do? 

And then I saw the Tequilacon 2008 invitation at Jen's. What better place to start therapy-ordered R&R than an event in which the other participants will be all liquored up.  It'll be just like being in college again.  Especially the part where a girl you've never met before carries you around on her back. 

(I tipped the scales at 245 this morning Jen. You might want to start doing squats to build up your legs and  lower back.)

Sweet.
 

Posted by delmer at 12:06 AM | Comments (10)

April 7, 2008

Bitten in the Arse

Every time I buy a Compaq computer it bites me in the ass.  Years will go by without me giving in and buying one and then something will happen, like a pleasant sales gal will call me, and I'll give in.

For more than a decade I've had f*cked up problems with Compaqs that I never have with any other PCs.

I had a drive fail in one once — more than 10 years ago. As it happened I had the exact same model drive on the shelf in my office and decided to install it. It didn't work.  A call to Compaq tech support had me running Debug to send commands to the drive's controller in order to make it compatible with whatever "magic" Compaq applied to their PCs to make them "better."  I was advised that mistyping any of the commands would totally trash the drive.

Another time a PC quit responding to the mechanical on/off switch. When I called tech support the first thing the guy asked was if I'd installed any other software.  Naturally, I had installed our word processing package and he felt this took Compaq off the hook for any problems.  Rather than get in a debate with the guy over how installing MS Office might make the an on/off switch work intermittently I hung up and waited for the unit to fail entirely. It did within the week.

I once bought a Compaq PC with NT 4 preinstalled as we needed a PC to run some in-house designed software.  It ran on Windows 98 but we wanted to send it out on an NT box because we thought it would look better to the customer.  The software, which ran on every other PC it had ever been installed on, would not run on the Compaq that had been "designed with NT in mind."  A call to tech support didn't help.

I've worked on several Compaqs my friends have owned and they always present more challenges than other computers.  Sometimes it's simply unexpected sharp edges inside the case. Other times it's things like BIOS settings that won't stick even with help from tech support.

Anyway, a few years have passed and I found some HP/Compaqs at a very attractive price. And I bought four, started setting one up, and I made the mistake of thinking "I can't believe how well this is going" for as my mind hit the final "g" in "going" my Oracle Client hung.

The Oracle Client, in all fairness, has been picky in the past. But this has typically been with PCs that had a previous Oracle Client installed.  I don't recall it ever choking on a fresh install.

We'll see what the rest of the day brings.

 

Posted by delmer at 10:03 AM | Comments (3)

April 4, 2008

A Drive Update

With the fresh OS install it now takes about 43 seconds for my login screen to come up; it used to take a minute and six seconds.

It also used to take almost five minutes for the hard-drive activity light to quit flashing after I powered up.  Now it takes… takes… well, something considerably less.  It's fast enough now that it finishes before I expect it to. I think it's likely 90 seconds. (Okay, I rebooted — for you — and it takes 82 seconds.)

I still have a couple of things that need to be reloaded. The application that remembers all of my passwords, for example; until I get it installed I can't pay bills online, or check to see now my stocks are tanking.

The things I needed for work were reinstalled right away.  The non-work things were loaded as I needed them and in one or two cases part of the install files were left on the old drive which was left, naturally, at work. So things like Ecto, the program I use to post to the blog, were not fully functional (to my liking) right away; I just got Ecto working the way I want it about an hour ago.

Why the speed improvement?  Well, I install and test a lot of things on my PC before I install them for others.  Even when those things are removed it would appear bits are left behind that degrade performance.

Other improvements I've noticed are that Ecto seems to be spell checking again.  While it had never lost its ability to find misspelled words, it had lost its will to correct them and would most often delete offending words or, even more likely, a portion of the word before the misspelled word and part of the misspelled word itself. Either way, it wasn't terribly useful.

Outlook 2007 has also quit reporting that I have a corrupt data file every frikkin' time I open it.  It also has not spontaneously crashed and restarted for no apparent reason since the reinstall. 

Like I said, I still have one or two things left to install — Roboform and Palm Desktop come to mind — but I can't believe I'll be back to a five-minute boot when I get the notebook back the way I want it.

Finally, between the notebook tweaking, track practice, baseball practice, play practice, chess club, washing and folding laundry, barely cooking, and the sort of nice weather, I've sort of fallen behind in replying to comments and reading other blogs.

I'll try to be a better nerd.

That reminds me of something. Don't let me forget to tell you what my therapy person said. 

Posted by delmer at 1:53 AM | Comments (2)

March 31, 2008

The 1/4 Terrabyte Drive

I remember, back, what? Twelve, thirteen, maybe more, years ago -- installing one gigabyte of storage in a desktop computer I had. A whole gig! Of course, to do this I had to use a 600 meg drive and a 400 meg drive. Or a seven-something and a two-something. In any case it was two drives.

Not terribly long after that Fujitsu brought out a one-gig drive for $99.00. It was amazging. A whole gig for under one-hundred bucks. Just imagine, a person could now have all the data they'd ever need on a single drive and still have 900 megabytes left over ... just in case. And, as this was in the days before high-speed Internet everywhere and easy-access Internet porn, "just in case" hardly ever came up; let alone anything else.

Another hard-drive memory involves the first 40-meg drive that came into the facility I worked at. DOS (3.2? 6? I don't remember) only recognizd 32 megs so the drive had to be divided into two partitions.

At the time we were running Wordperfect for DOS. I don't remember all the details but we needed to intsall it on a computer with a full hard drive (maybe to replace MultiMate) and we didn't have enough space. As I recall we deleted something like two megs of data -- maybe more or less -- which was all WordPerfect needed to get it to go in.

This, for those of you still reading, was also during the days in which we were running PageMaker on a 286. It ran using a run-time version of Windows -- a product I'd never heard of that I think was in version 1.x. The PageMaker manual suggested, and I'll make a number up here, that the program would run best with 586K, of the 640K, installed conventional memory. To get whatever the number was required loading drivers into extended memory.

And while my memory may be fuzzy on that and how it all worked, my memory is clear as a bell when it comes to remembering having something like 584K available and PageMaker running like a dog and then getting the magic 586 freed up and having the program take off like nothing else.

Fast forward to today and I'm installing a 1/4 terrabyte drive in my notebook computer. I will now be able to lose more data than used to exist in all the known universes in a single hard drive crash. (Doesn't 1/4 terrabyte sound so much bigger than 250 gigs?)

Rather than just clone the drive and transfer everything over I've taken the step of reinstalling the operating system from the ground up. It seemed like time.

Posted by delmer at 12:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 28, 2008

Hey Nerds

Several weeks ago I replaced a PC in one of our test rigs. It runs custom software and uses Windows 3.1. Part of this PC is an IEEE card that requires an ISA slot.

Which is all a way of saying an older PC is required.

There have been several problems with the PC in the time since I've put it in.  I'm hoping that today's problem will turn explain the weirdness of the past several weeks.

Today the PC would not boot at the test station. The power supply fan would turn on as would the processor fan. That was it.  This had been reported before but I'd never been able to reproduce the problem after hours when I had access to the PC without being in anybody's way.

I tried several of the obvious troubleshooting things and swapped out likely bad pieces before deciding to take it to my office.

I plugged it in there and it worked. Naturally.

Still, I replaced the graphics card and memory as there was certainly something wrong and they were fair candidates. I turned the PC on and off several times.

I returned it to the test station. Where it failed to boot past the fans coming on.

I took it to a second station. It booted.

I returned it to the original station. It failed to boot. I replaced the power cable, just in case. And then again. Still nothing.

A meter was applied to the incoming power where it was found to be 116 volts, four volts under the 120 we'd expect and six volts over the 110 the power supply suggested it needed. 

All of the outlets at this station showed 116 volts and none of them would boot the PC.

A meter at the second station showed 120 volts.

The PC seems to work everywhere except where I need it to, and the difference appears to be four volts.

I've ordered a new power supply. One that I hope is less finicky.

Posted by delmer at 11:16 PM | Comments (3)

March 21, 2008

Acronyms

We have communications meetings each month in which we're given company updates, mention birthdays and anniversaries, welcome new employees, and things of that nature. It seems that we have company-provided pizza and salad every other month. We used to have cake and ice cream at each meeting but have recently moved to a healthier fruit-and-yogurt model.

Once in a while, at least every quarter, we'll have a presentation put on by one of the departments.  Well, mostly Sales and Engineering as a Finance Department presentation would be boring as hell. Think of how mind-numbingly dull the exercise of balancing your checkbook is; now imagine watching someone else balance their checkbook via Powepoint presentation and a projector… you get the point.

Not long ago it was the Sales Department's turn.  Our Sales Director started his presentation my by mentioning that he was going to spend a moment explaining some of the acronyms that are commonly used in the company; he'd been asked to do so for the sake of new employees.

As he said this an image appeared on the screen that contained some of the acronyms as well as a partial list of some of our customers. Perhaps he was going to explain where the various technologies are used, I don't recall.

One of the customers, from a country far, far away, and partially fictionalize here, was Futo.

While I lack anything in the way of impulse control I do have a good sense of comedic timing. "I know what "F U" is," I said, before the Sales Director had time to start, "but what's T O?"

Everybody had a laugh and at the end of the day I was still employed.

What more can you ask for?

Posted by delmer at 1:14 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2008

The Blog Is Three Today

That would be -16.1 C.

Historians, when they check the WADLL archives will note that I posted every day for the last year… and the year before that.  Readers will note that it only appears that I posted every day as sometimes I manipulate the dates; this typically happens during vacations, when I don't have access to affordable Internet service or when I quit blogging (happily, that's only happened once).

Heaven knows that simply having nothing to say doesn't keep me from posting.

Anyway, today the blog is three.

If you were to give enough monkeys enough typewriters they'd eventually kick out all the stuff I've produced these past three years. And they'd likely correct the typos that still exist in these pages. An IBM Supercomputer with a random-character generator might be a bit faster. Maybe not. It probably depends a lot on the Monkey Wrangler hired to ride herd over the non-human simians.

Speaking of birthdays:

 

This picture was taken while we were in Washington DC.  That might be my 39th birthday as I think Sam is older in the picture that follows and I'm certainly 40 in that series (note the balloon). In this photo you see, Jack, Sam and Haydn. And a beefy me of course.

 

This is Samson with Tony, the World's Best Brother-In-Law.  We're celebrating my 40th birthday.

 

My sister, Millie, and me.

Posted by delmer at 7:21 AM | Comments (11)

March 17, 2008

I had to tell the world

Or at least the part that stops by here.

I just played "HAWKINGS" in an on-line Scrabble game for 266 points.

 

 

Posted by delmer at 11:28 AM | Comments (9)

March 12, 2008

More from my e-mail

The SPAM said:

I can get your site to the top of a search engines listings. 

If you're interested, reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options. 

Thanks in advance 

A Spammer 

 

Who wouldn't want to be at the top of of the list when a search for "Delmer" is done?!  I know it's a dream of mine.

And it's a dream I've made come true without the help of any third-party spammer.  If you do a search on delmer in Google, Alsta Vista, Yahoo, Ask and Dogpile, I'm at the top of the list.

Yes, yes, yes. Once there was the time I played second, third or fourth fiddle to Sefton Delmer, Delmer Daves and Delmer the Electronic Weighing People, depending, it seemed, on the day of the week. Now, however, I sit alone at the top of the Delmer heap.

And this, I think, makes me King of the Delmers.

You do not need to bow.  Just send cookies.  You know the kind I like.

 

Posted by delmer at 2:46 PM | Comments (8)

February 25, 2008

Rewards

Not long ago I had the opportunity to provide telephone and e-mail support to four separate women on two different continents with four separate wireless networking problems. 

In the end I'd made four women happy. I suspect some of this happiness came about as none of the women actually had to have me in their homes and having me around sometimes has a negative effect on the level of happiness a woman feels toward me.

Ah well. At least in none of the above cases were attorneys or large sums of money exchanged.

Two of the women I've never met in person and know only on-line. One of them lives in Canada and is 29.

Before we continue with that story, let me tell you another. This one involves Canada as well. Oh, and an on-line forum. I was in Usenet and ran across a thread in which someone was talking about a book called The Testosterone Advantage Plan. He was thinking of buying a copy and I offered to send him mine as it was going to do me no good since my low testosterone was caused by bad hormones.  I had the guy send me his address and I shipped him the book for free — I even paid postage, which was a little more than usual due to the Canadian-boundness of the package.

So, my female Canadian friend had a wireless problem and it looked like her notebook might have lacked a wireless card. I several of these at work that we'll never use and I thought I'd send her one. 

One of the rules I live by is that I don't ask women I don't know for their addresses. Another rule I live by is that I don't hit on women 15 years or more younger than I am. Well, women in general, but 15 or more years younger would be even more uncomfortable.

As luck would have it I was getting ready to ship presents to the children of another Canadian gal. Even luckier was the fact she knew the first woman (which is not as uncommon as it sounds … Canada is sort of thin when it comes to population).  I figured I could send the gal I knew the card, she could get the address of the second gal and send the card off to her.  I'd be able to keep a wireless network card out of the landfill and someone who needed one wouldn't have to shell out fifty bucks for one.

I ran the plan by woman I was sending the package to. She suggested that if I were trying to seduce the other women that I could leave her out of it.

This led to some discussion in which I pointed out how I was just trying to be a nice guy, how I thought it might be sort of creepy for me to ask for the address and how it might make her feel unsafe, and how I didn't expect to sleep with everybody I tried to do something nice for (please refer to The Testosterone Advantage Plan story above).

Conversation eventually turned to other things. One of those things reminded me of something I'd done several weeks prior and allowed me to say, "That was the Saturday night I was helping so-and-so strip wallpaper… because I'm a nice guy and not because I'm trying to sleep with her."

In the end I didn't need to send a wireless card to Canada. Some additional research uncovered a situation with the notebook that was resolvable my e-mail.

And the reward: I felt like a helper.

Posted by delmer at 11:59 AM | Comments (1)

February 15, 2008

The Dammit Thought

Yesterday I needed a computer to install Linux on for use with an upcoming project.  The computer isn't going to have a lot of demand put on so almost anything not to terribly old will work.

I found a PC in Engineering that had been set aside just to keep the data it contained handy in case it was ever needed (even though it had been written do tape and DVD as well … you can never have too many copies of your data).  I decided to take the box, make another copy of the data (just in case), remove the drive and set is aside (just in case)and use the computer.

When it came to making another copy of the data what I should have done was write it to the network and then back to a PC with a DVD burner in it. Instead, as I had a new tool — one that would let me plug an IDE drive (2.5 or 3.5 inch) or SATA drive into a USB port, I decided to remove the drive and use the new tool. 

(It's worth noting that the PC sat, running, on a table behind me for most of a day.)

I installed new drives and reconfigured them so they'd be on different IDE channels. I added RAM and replaced a noisy CPU fan.

I went about installing the software and endured several hours of the computer hanging time and again as I removed, reinstalled and reconfigured the various parts.

I eventually had it stripped to nothing, and still getting hangs, when I had the Dammit thought.

That thought went: Dammit! We decommissioned this computer because it had started to spontaneously reboot itself. I thought then that it might have a motherboard problem.

I verified the rebooting problem with the previous owner. He had to put some thought into it, so I felt a little better.

Had I tried to write the computer's data to the network I'm certain it would have failed and I'd have had the dammit thought a bit sooner.

But no, I had a shiny new toy I wanted to try out.

And you know how men are.

(The new toy makes the data-transfer process faster. Ninety-nine percent of the time it would have sped up this project as I could have started the software install without having to do the data-transfer dance back and forth between PCs.) 

Posted by delmer at 12:25 PM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2007

Mail Hell

So.

Yesterday I was working on a project that involved a problem with the integration between our phone system and e-mail server.  Without getting into all the details let's just say there was a step that should have been almost instantaneous that was taking minutes each time I tried to do it.  And, I was going to have to do it 39 times.  And, later this week I was going to have to do it a bunch more times.

History has taught me that a lot of time can be spent trying to solve a problem that never really gets solved or by the time it does get solved the amount of time spent solving it is far greater than the amount of time that would have been spent trudging through the hell that is the current problem.

With that in mind I set about trying to solve the problem on another PC while my first PC was trudging along. I knew I wouldn't be able to make the big change that I was certain would set everything right until I'd gone through the 39 things I had to do first. Still, maybe something would work from the second PC.

The day ended without a fix but with a thought about what I'd do the next day (today).

And today I came in and booted up my PC.  I started my mail client and noticed that the folder I was working from had a nicer look to it. One that suggested that something astounding and helpful had happened. Working from it I was able to complete steps almost instantaneously. It was a true Christmas miracle. And this was a freebie — I hadn't had to try any fixes!

I knocked out five steps in about two minutes before something unkind happened; I'd lost the ability to click my mail client. I piddled around and decided to reboot.  As open windows closed one was finally revealed that asked, "Do you want to overwrite this file with a this file of the same name?"  While those were not the exact filenames I think you can get a feel for what was going on. My mail application was asking if I wanted to copy a file over an existing file and the dialog box — which had the computer's focus — wasn't going to let me do anything else in my mail client until it had received an answer.  Unfortunately that dialog box was hidden behind other windows and I hadn't seen it or thought to look for it. That window closed as the computer rebooted.

Following the fresh start my mail client had slipped back into troublesome mode.

I rebooted (more than once) again, hoping the Christmas Miracle would repeat itself. 

It hasn't.

The upside is I was able to write this blog entry as my computer trudges through two (so far) steps.

Posted by delmer at 10:14 AM | Comments (5)

November 22, 2007

More Tech Support

The other afternoon I spent some time working on a friend's home network. Without getting into too many details I'll just say I reached a point where I needed to assign an IP address to one of the computers rather than permit it to have an IP address given to it via DHCP.

In Windows XP when you tick the Use the Following IP Address (to assign an IP address) box you also have to enter DNS server info.  I needed to call the ISP's Tech Support to get those addresses.

So I did. And I had a conversation similar to this. 

Me: I'm calling to get the IP addresses for your DNS servers.

TS: You only have one IP address. The one that comes from the modem.

Me: I know. That's not the one I'm talking about. I'm after the IP address for the domain name servers.

TS: What will you do when they change?

Well, I've been using your service at work for 8 years and the numbers have changed but once. It isn't something that happens often. 

Me: I'll change them on this end when that happens.

TS: I can tell you what your modem's IP address is.

Me: I can get that myself. I have three computers and I need the DNS servers as I'm assigning an IP address to one of them.

TS: But you only have one IP address for that modem. You can't use three computers...

I was starting to catch on.

Me: I have everything behind a router and I use network address translation to provide IP addresses that start 192 and are not in the public range.  I need the DNS server info so that when I type in a web address my computer will know where to go in order to get the information it needs to resolve the address to a location on the Internet.  I've got the information from you before and have it written down at work.

I stopped short of saying "I think the first  two octets are 65.24"

TS: Let me ask someone else.

The briefest of moments pass.

TS: I was told to tell you to type "ipconfig /renew" and then "ipconfig /all" all in a DOS box to get the info you need.

Which will show the DNS server as being the router, or 192.168.1.1 

Me: That's not going to give me what I want.  I'll call work and ask someone there.

If I'd only bought my PDA with me. I've got the DNS server info in it.  Wait. I did. It's in my bike bag. 

The first two octets were... drum roll, please ... 65.24.

(In all fairness, this was residential-service tech support.  At work I always call Business-Class support and they are more used to the request I made.)

 

 

 

Posted by delmer at 12:02 AM | Comments (7)

November 21, 2007

Go Elf Yourself

 

Firefox users (and maybe others) can click the images for holiday magic. IE6 users may have to click these links:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9565437028 

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9565621142 

 

Posted by delmer at 9:33 AM | Comments (10)

November 18, 2007

WAA

Sue, at La Chanson de Phoenix was kind enough to favor me with the Winning Attitude Award.  I'm not one to get all Sally Field on you (though, you know even at 61, I don't think I'd mind having a little bit of Sally Field on me), so I'll simply say, thank you Sue. 

I was one of several people Sue passed the award onto and for each person she wrote a little bit about that person's blog. She wrote this about me:

Delmer (What's a Delmer Look Like? Beats me, but he's very charismatic! I think I picked a good day to link to his blog... could have been worse... I'll leave it at that!) 

If you are a regular reader of WADLL you know exactly what she means; it could have been worse.  

As she says, I'll leave it at that.

 

Posted by delmer at 10:23 AM | Comments (7)

November 17, 2007

People need to get a life.

Today is November 17.

I know.

You can't believe I'm posting a blog entry, what with it being the day of the Ohio/Michigan game and all.

Even as I type the rest of the city is suiting up, painting their faces, pulling on their lucky underwear and shaving their bodies. As much as I don't understand any of this, the body shaving puzzles me most.

Beer runs are being made. Kroger is being emptied of ice, wings and cheese trays.

By 11 a.m. the entire city will be ready.  If the OSU football team sustains injuries to the point they're out of subs, Jim Tressel (the coach) can merely dial any phone number in the 614 area code to find an eager replacement willing to make the drive to Michigan as soon as he or she sucks the hot sauce off their fingers.

As for me? Jim should probably not bother to call my home. I lack the sit on my ass and watch football gene though I intend to be sitting on my ass elsewhere.

And I may do some shopping.

 

Posted by delmer at 8:10 AM | Comments (13)

November 12, 2007

The Seven Meme

Susie tagged me with the 7 Things You Don't Know But I Do meme. While it would have been easy enough for Susie to claim Finnish and Swedish (and, well, English if you consider that too many of us have trouble with the language) as two of the seven items, she went well beyond those things. I don't know if I'll be able to be as revealing.

Here goes:

1. In college I was recruited by the CIA to be a field agent. In the end I didn't make it as I was too tall. At the time the CIA was using a particular rig when they'd wire their agents for communications. Due to my height, the distance between my butt, where the battery would have been hidden, and ear was too great.

Wait, that wasn't me. That was Chuck.

This is going to be hard as I pretty much put anything that's ever happened to me in this blog. I haven't posted pre-gyno pictures of my chest, but I probably would if I didn't have kids.

Let's go again.  Some of this may have appeared elsewhere in the blog. Some of these things may not be secret to anyone but me for other reasons:

1. I do a thing with my tongue that women can't believe. I keep it in my mouth and listen to what they have to say rather than wag it around in an attempt to dominate dinner conversation.  At least I think I do. I'm a guy, how smart can I be? (Lunch is when I do all my talking.)

2. I am quieter than you might believe. If I see you and don't know you well I'm not likely to walk up to and start a conversation. I don't know that I'm particularly shy, I just assume you have better things to do that talk to me and I don't want to be a bother.  If you've made the mistake of getting to know me well, ah… you get what you deserve. 

3. It is rare for me to compliment the wives of my male friends. There are exceptions to this rule, for example if the woman was my friend before I knew the husband or was my friend independent of the husband. It isn't a terribly complex formula, just the one I use. This is all tied to something that happened on March 21 many years ago, and if you want to dig through the March archives you can sort it out yourself. Those of us that know what happened don't need the link. (And the reason why I don't compliment wives of friends will not be in the least bit apparent.)

4. Until recently I thought I chose to do the things I do as a way of insulating myself from others, specifically women. Believe me, if you get divorced you'll understand exactly what I mean here. In the past couple of weeks, though, I've come to understand I really like doing what I do for no other reason than I enjoy it. I like riding my bike.  I think I'd like it more if I joined a group ride, but so far I've been too lazy to find one. Not long ago someone asked me to meet them for lunch and I wondered if I'd be able to pull it off and still ride my bike to work that day. I like lifting weights in my garage; I don't have to wait for equipment and my son can lift with me.

5. My high school French teacher thinks I made horrifically obscene phone calls to her while I was in college. I didn't. I have a friend who is a teacher and would, eventually, teach with this person. The French teacher, all these years later, still thinks it was me. This troubles me more than I can explain and more than it ever should have. (I think that's a new one; something I've never mentioned in the blog.)

6. I don't tell people I write a blog. I may have, at one time, when it was about my kids.  Of course, if you're looking for me and Google 'Delmer' I come up number one ahead of the weight and scale company, the director, and the journalist (I never know it that last one is a real guy or a fictional character).

7. I may say things like "my children are the second-most-adorable group of children in the world, right behind yours," and "my driving skills are second only to yours" but I really think my kids are the most adorable in the entire world. And I'm soooo much a better driver than you are.

 

Today's picture (from my phone):  Yesterday the boys and I went and hit several buckets of golf balls. This is Jack taking a swing, and you'll have to excuse his grip; he was making better contact with the ball using the grip show, and yesterday (in the cold and rain) it was all about contact ... not form.

 

 

Posted by delmer at 7:15 AM | Comments (14)

November 11, 2007

Celebration 3

At the end of last month I promised you that November would bring with it three celebrations.

The first celebration came on November 3 when I put 2000 miles on the Mighty Schwinn.

The second celebration hit three days later on November 6 with the one-year anniversary of my new belly button.

Today, November 11,  I'm shooting the November-Celebratory Wad: This is the one-thousandth post on What's a Delmer Look Like? 

I know, I know. Some of the women readers are a somewhat disappointed and think the celebrations have ended a bit prematurely. 

There was such promise. The month started with a little bit of teasing. Nothing too-in-your-face, just the hint of something big to come.

November 3 and the Mighty Schwinn story hit just about the time they thought I'd lost interest; the women had been considering moving on to another blog … a more sensitive blog … a blog that seemed to know where to move and what to do without a lot of direction … a blog that didn't fumble with buttons or whatever those frikkin' snaps are called …a blog with an easier name to scream. 

The Mighty Schwinn story kept them from leaving. Women like a guy who can go the distance in the saddle (though they're not keen on "saddle" references to any part of their body; especially if it's followed by "bags") and 2000 miles is certainly going the distance.  All of a sudden What's a Delmer Look Like? was showing some serious promise.

The second celebration came a little sooner than expected. Things were moving faster than they liked. Well, they thought, ya gotta dance with the one that brung ya. We've got a couple of hours before mom and dad come home we've got three weeks left in November, there's still plenty of time to end with a big bang. 

After a couple of days, things were looking good again. The hairs on the napes of the women readers' necks (excluding my mother, sister, sister-in-law, and nieces) and started to prick up in a way that only a story about the one-year anniversary of a new belly button can cause prickage.

Almost there.  And yet nowhere close. Thank God, they thought, there's so much of the month left.  

And just as they finished that thought — boom — the floodgates were released.

We hit the 1000th entry. 

Sooner than they'd hoped, and for this they have my apologies. 

What can I say, I did everything I could to delay it.  I tried pacing myself by typing more slowly. I used long, hard-to-spell words rather than those that are short and easy to spell (like: in, and, out). I thought about baseball.  

To all the women I've disappointed today, let me say: Have some chocolate.  Then hit the shower, as cute as you look sweaty, there's a lot of today left and you don't want to go out with a look of disappointment on your face and sweat on your brow.

The guys — any of them that are still awake and not slumped comatose and drooling over their keyboards — are thinking WTF are you talking about? You made it to November 11, I'd have never made it that long! Bravo! You rock! 

As for the guys who have fallen asleep, well, unfortunately for them they'll miss the stats:

1000 Posts

497,337  Words (I counted twice)

2,538,105  Characters (excluding spaces)

3,043,253  Characters (with spaces)

[Hey, women readers' necks, that is supposed to be possessive plural, isn't it?]

Picture of the day: Jack and his sled, Christmas 2004 at Granny and Big D's.

 

Posted by delmer at 10:14 AM | Comments (10)

November 10, 2007

My Pipe

Way back on June 3, 2005 I reported the speed of my Internet connection as:

 

It was just over 3.9 Mb per second.

Today, running the same test from, theoretically (who knows what's changed elsewhere) the same server, my connection is:

 

In non-graph form that's 5.8 Mbps.

Using another server, one I that I know is in Chicago, and possibly closer to me I get:

That's 6.8 Mb per second download and 490 Kb per second upload.  Servers in San Francisco and Seattle returned download speeds of just over 5 Mb per second; upload speeds were affected less with Seattle coming in at 487 Kbps.

 

 

RoadRunner is my ISP so I'd expect to get the best results with downloads from their network.  The download came in at 837 Kbps, or 8.3 Mbps.  In 2005 it came down at 593 Kbps or just under 6 Mbps.

What does all of this mean?  Well, the cost of my service has not gone up — and with the things I've bundled in may be spiritually less expensive — and I'm getting more bits per second: Millions more.

As I said back in 2005 — I remember when a dial-up connection of 4 kpbs was kicking ass and downloading the new Internet Explorer was something you started just before you went to bed and let run all night.  As you can see in the last picture, I can now download a 95 Mb. file in something like two minutes. 

Posted by delmer at 7:39 AM | Comments (13)

October 27, 2007

The Slip

In preparation for the 80-mile-out-and-back ride that never happened I purchased a new item for my bike. Actually my helmet.

The item I purchased: The Slip by Slipstreamz

As you can see, The Slip fits over the ear and is supposed to reduce wind noise. The Slip also has a pocket, or groove, or something, on the inside that allows you use your iPod ear buds as you ride.  The ear buds are held outside the ear canal allowing you to hear traffic.

I'm not interested in starting a debate on just how wise it is to listen to an iPod while biking.  We'll leave that to another blog in another part of the Internet. (I will say, however, that I'm just a little embarrassed to be seen with ear buds in and do all I can to hide my ear bud cord.)

Each day I've used The Slip it's been pretty windy out, so there's still been plenty of wind noise. I'm certain the noise is reduced however; for the first time ever I heard my cell phone when it went off and I was pedaling. There have been times I've been out riding, stopped, checked the phone, noticed I had a couple of calls and had wondered how I'd missed them as it hadn't seemed all that noisy on the bike.

I'd swear, too, that I can hear cars better when they come up behind me. The first couple of times I was passed I was surprised at how much louder the cars had sounded and thought it might have been related more to the road surface.  I now think it has more to do with the wind-noise reduction. (More research needs to be done on this before I swing solidly either way.)

By the way, I noticed the louder traffic during an outing in which I wasn't using ear buds.

However, with ear buds in I had no trouble hearing traffic noises.  Nothing passed me that I hadn't heard coming well in advance. And I could hear just as well regardless of whether I was listening to Foghat or a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me podcast.

Installation of The Slip was easy enough, so I won't go into any great details.

I used The Slip for the 25 miles out to Mechanicsburg and wasn't terribly impressed. I thought I might be having less-than-spectacular results as my chin strap wasn't snug.  When I got to Mechanicsburg I tightened the chin strap which served to draw The Slip in closer to my ears; it made a big difference in how The Slip performed.

You'll notice the guy above has an almost Link-from-the-Mod-Squad cool about him.

This is my impression:

Posted by delmer at 10:50 PM | Comments (5)

October 26, 2007

The Why I Blog Meme

Nina, from The Alien Next Door tagged me with the Blogging with a Purpose meme.  [Again, for those of you unfamiliar, meme rhymes with scheme, theme and for all you Johnny Quest fans (I'll spell this phonetically as I know Dubya is a WADLL reader) three of the five syllables in seem seem ala-beem. (You know I'm just kidding about Dubya being a reader here. He just stops by to look at the pretty pictures.)]

This meme is sort of like a chain-letter or multi-level-marketing meme without the downside that comes with putting money in upfront and relying on the kindness of others to help you recoup your investment; there is no investment, other than a brief amount of time.

My meme-ing problem is that, while I don't mind being tagged (and respond to every tag I notice) I'm no good at tagging others; I hate to take the roll of programmer as it applies to their blogs. You'll be happy to know that my counselor person and I are working on this problem as it applies to things larger than blog writing.

So, if you're interested, don't be afraid to get all Divinyls-like:  When you think about WADLL I want you to tag yourself.

 

**start copying here**

We have a voice;
We must be heard;
Therefore we blog;
Now spread the word!

This meme is based on a recent post that was conducted that asks the question “Why do you Blog?” and the rewrite “Why do you Blog? - Reworked.” The purpose of this meme is to tell our tales by spreading the reasons that we blog to as many sites as possible. We get to explain ourselves, direct traffic to our site and highlight our most important, most representative or most relevant post in an SEO favorable format. This will be a positive experience for everyone who wants to get involved. This will enable you to create a short advertisement for your site that will be spread across the blogesphere; a growing directory of blogs.

This is an open meme. You do not have to be tagged to join in. All you have to do is follow the rules.

Please let me know when you have added your site by leaving a comment on “Complete List” with a link to your post. This will insure an up-to-date list, giving you even greater distribution. You then have the option of copying the growing list back to your site.
Rules:

1. Create an inventive post title
2. Write a brief introduction to the meme.
3. Copy from “**Start Copying Here**” through “**End Copying Here**”
4. Paste into your post
5. At the end of the “*list*”, before “**End copy here**”, please add your name, site name (with link), a very brief description (2-3 sentences) of why you blog, and your most important, most representative, or most relevant post (with link.)
6. Tag at least 5 others to participate.
7. Leave a comment and a link to your post on “Complete List”

*Begin Directory*
My name is Mel and I am the Author of Attitude, the Ultimate Power, aka Monday Morning Power. I blog because I am passionate about happiness and living in the moment. I want to spread the concept that we are in control of our own lives and can choose how we act and react. My site is focused on the Pursuit, Capture, Care and Feeding of a Positive Mental Attitude. One of my most representative posts is “Happiness Vs. Human Nature.”

I am Max and I offer weekly articles on MAX. Why do I blog? I do it because I want to share my thoughts with you guys. I present a new and interesting way of transmitting philosophical thoughts: funny, engaging and intriguing! My funniest, yet intriguing, post is "Don't you just love People?"

I am the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius. My 100% factual blog The Thoughts and Sayings Of Baba Doodlius is intended to educate all of you curious readers about the Truth behind the Great Secrets of the Universe. I have the Truth! Can you handle the Truth? For a sample of my powers of enlightenment, read my Revelation of the terrible secret of Bigfoot, aka Don't get stepped on.

My name is Amelia and I am the Author of Amel's Realm. I blog because I need to voice everything in my world so that I won't explode. My site is all about thoughts, experiences, fears, problems, misadventures, hopes, and dreams of an introverted tropical girl in a foreign land (Finland). One of my most representative posts is On Trust and Relationship.

Hi, I am The Queen of Sugar in The Blogosphere but, My name is Judy in life, I am the one and only Author of Sugar Queens Dream, I am also a Co-Author at Santa's community Blog. I blog because I enjoy the aspect of friendship's gained and talking about my funky but "normal" family, the lessons of Life, Its ups and downs, the sad but real things I've had to endure and in doing so, I am able to work through the extreme aspects of life with my dignity in tact and my mood still happy, I feel that I work some of my frustrations out during the posts I compile, I then, can look back and see that I remained true to myself and the thinking I have of facing things head on and admitting I am human and with faults.
In the beginning, I blogged solely about the way I love to bake sugary sweet treats for the ones I love, and also my small business. Doing that had given me hours of happiness and a sense of control over my "need" to give to others and to feel love returned in the form of happy faces..... I then, realized, I could let some of my inner feelings out and that others didn't judge me for doing so. When I realized that other people felt the same feelings as me, it released a feeling of ultimate power over my life and my thoughts...... The post that really shows how I open myself up for others to understand me and my Blog is: The myths of smoking.

I am Geoff of Geoffandcarley.com and I blog for reasons as diverse and as fickle as my moods. Mostly I blog because I'm firmly convinced I've figured a few things out and that the world will benefit from my experience the same way I've benefited from others' experiences. One post that I feel captures my emotional involvement and my ire (but not my humor as much) is Decision time.

My name is Sindi and I have written a blog entitled Life is a roller coaster!. My blog is based on the ups and downs of everyday life. I started blogging because I was going through some hard times and I wanted to meet new people to talk to. I like to write and was hoping people might enjoy reading what I have to say. I think the most inspiring post I have written to date is We Effect So Many.

People call me the Midgetmanofsteel (although I’m neither a midget, nor made of steel). I am the sole author the blog Mental Poo: a mostly true and humorous account of things that have happened to me, are happening to me, or are just filling my head and taking up valuable space where images of women should be. You can get a sneak peek into my mess of a brain by reading “Raisins are People” – a true account of my son’s first field trip.

My name is Sandee and I have a blog called Comedy Plus. My blog is just for fun, and I started it to poke fun about everyday life. My reason for blogging is to have fun and meet new friends. I have done both beyond my wildest dreams. I have posted lots of jokes, but when ask what my favorite joke is, I always pick Anger Management

My name is Lynda. I blog to as a way to expose my writings and to spread my knowledge on the subject of love. My primary blog (I have 15) is lynda's loft. My favorite piece would be I LOVE..... I have over 300 original poems and posts dealing with the wonderful and painful world of love. I love love!

My name Adrian, although most of you probably know me as the Mighty Genie King. I am the author First Time Dad. I started blogging as a way to document my growing up pains as my wife and I raise our daughter. I hope that one day my daughter will be able to look at this and get an idea what life was like "back then". Now I blog about everything but the main focus is still the same! One of my favorite posts is Goodnight Sweetheart! Hello Basil! Eh...Who's Basil...

Hello, my name is Ann and I'm the author of A Nice Place in the Sun. I blog because I care about people and want to make them happy. My site is focused on humorous, inspiring, and nostalgic posts about life, children, and memories. My most representative post, or the post where I'm most myself is "The Craziest Experience Of My Life."

We are a team of writers, and everyone calls us NAFA, so that would be our name. We are the proud authors of NAFASG©™ - United And Dedicated Behind You™. Blogging, to us, is a form of spreading useful information and sharing our knowledge to every part of the world in order to contribute to the betterment of our global community. The post that we feel would be representative of our blog and the global community at large is The Sociological Interaction.

Hola! This is Mariuca and I blog because writing is what makes me whole. I write about anything under the sun from life, love, friends to cats and work. I tend to write best when under pressure and my personal favourite post from Mariuca is Love in Disarray.

My name is Susan and I am the Owner of ~~Wake up America ~~, which is a political, right leaning blog. I blog because I believe we need more voices out there to separate fact from fiction, to support our troops and to high light the lack of ethics from journalists today. I feel my most powerful post is called "Are You Proud to be an American......"

"Here I am :-) My name is Mauro and I'm the author of 1 Million Love Messages ... maybe the biggest love challenge in the blogosphere. Why I blog ??? Because I believe that bloggers can make a difference in the world. That's my challenge! My favourite post it's (for sure) Adam Donkus & Lizzie's Love History."

Hi there World I am Aussie, the author of Little Aussie Cynic and I want to Breathe among others. I was recently asked:"Why Do you Blog?" this takes me back to the beginning... I started blogging in an attempt to get people thinking, using my cynical humour as a tool to make people laugh, think and at times get the blood pumping.... Each of my Blogs takes in a little peice of my varied personality but the one which discribes me best would have to be There is Always a Natural Way the latest edition to the Aussie Cynic Family...

I am Zubli Zainordin, in Total Happiness, I organize the