I haven’t had a lot of free time the past couple of weeks, and as you’ve probably gathered, I haven’t been spending a lot of it in front of a computer. I’ve been in the basement, learning how to make stuff for the train.
Along the way, I’ve learned a few things, mostly from experience rather than from books. I still have a long way to go.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/learning-about-scratchbuilding-the-hard-way/
I still haven’t fixed the calendar (I’m a slacker) but I’ve got two other important things working. For those of you who use RDF/RSS, my feed is working (the link’s in the lower right), and for those of you who use blo.gs to track your favorite blogs, I’ve got my blo.gs update working now too.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/two-new-things-are-working/
I saw a great e-mail signature line today. Like all great lines, it summed up something that everyone has thought a million times in a single brilliant sentence.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/i-need-to-use-this-for-my-e-mail-signature-line/
Funny how now that the New York Yankees have added the most expensive sports contract in history, Alex Rodriguez, to their already outrageously priced roster, suddenly the freespending Boston Red Sox, owner of the second-most expensive sports contract in history and the second-highest payroll in baseball, are calling for a salary cap.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/salary-cap-baseball-needs-something/
But I gots a dead server. No, this server’s fine, but one of the servers at work is dying a horrible death. So I’ll be dealing with that this weekend, instead of writing cool stuff. Part of me wants to complain, but then another part of me reminds me that it’s because of emergencies like this that I have a nice house and a nice car and I’m ahead of schedule on paying off both of them, so that part of me shuts up pretty fast.
So anyway, I may not resurface for a few days, depending on how this goes.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/so-i-was-gonna-write-some-cool-stuff-this-weekend/
So today I was one of at least two people trying to help Jerry Pournelle get the original Railroad Tycoon running under Windows XP. The secret is DOSBox, a cross-platform DOS emulator.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/running-ancient-dos-games-on-modern-windows/
I fixed my Marx 490 locomotive this weekend. I used the tips in The All Gauge Model Railroading Marx Trains guide. Scroll down to the heading titled, “The Marx motor.”
I was skeptical because these instructions call for WD-40, and it seems I’ve read a hundred other places never to use WD-40 on any model train. But my Marx 490 wasn’t running well, and it would cost more to have it professionally repaired than it’s worth.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/fixing-a-marx-490-o27-toy-locomotive/
I’ve been thinking about Mel Gibson’s upcoming The Passion of Christ. It’s hard not to, with all the publicity drummed up about it, and my church bought two showings of it on opening week and me finding out today that we’ve already sold all of our tickets.
I believe the controversy is misplaced, but I don’t want to dissuade the people who are up in arms about the movie. Keep talking about it. Keep drawing attention to it. That only means that more people will talk about it, and more people will see it. And talking about it and seeing it is exactly what Mel Gibson wants. And talking about Him is exactly what Jesus wanted.
The rest of this post is for the rest of you.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/todays-focus-on-christs-death-is-misplaced/
I think I vaguely recall Southwestern Bell was doing some maintenance this weekend. Sometimes my DSL connection survives interruptions and sometimes it doesn’t. Today it didn’t.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/the-dsl-connection-was-down-this-morning/
Steve sent me some questionable advice he found online–basically, someone advocating that you build your high-end servers rather than buying them, but admitting that it’s difficult for someone to build a $20,000 server and still be able to afford to maintain the thing.
There’s a solution: Buy it.
http://dfarq.homeip.net/2004/02/buy-dont-build-enterprise-servers/
