The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

  • Does this happen to you?

    I’ve noticed this more and more lately.  I’ll be watching tv or listening to the radio (at home, in the car, it doesn’t matter) and I’ll hear two notes that sound exactly like my Instant Messenger notification sound on my computers.  It catches my attention like you wouldn’t believe, and if I’m anywhere remotely close to my computers I’ll start searching for a blinking IM window.  Heck, even when I’m not near a computer it causes me to start looking around for a spit second.

    Anyone else have this problem?

  • New PDA

    Ana’s new PDA arrived today, the Asus A626, and it’s pretty darn cool.  Now I want one, but I have to keep telling myself that I’m near a computer for the vast majority of my day so there’s just no need…damn!

    Ana discovered that along with her new job at Memorial, she was spending a lot of time out of her office but still needed quick access to her email and calendar.  So it was pretty clear that she could use a pda or smartphone.  Luckily, whenever she’s offsite, she’s at one of the other hospital buildings will full wireless access.  That combined with our unwillingness to pay for these expensive cellular data plans made the choice for a standone pda very simple.  The connection speeds sure beat cellular too.

    So I got it all setup tonight and it’s happily syncing with her Exchange account at work.

    As the former owner of a few PalmOS devices, I never got to play around with Windows-based PDAs.  I really liked what I saw.

  • Spring Geyser

    Or just a faulty sump line.

    Those have have followed this blog for years may recall that we had a tremendous time getting our sump pump line installed/buried/whatever by the terrible company that built the house – Construx.  They’ve been out of business for a couple years now, thank goodness, but their handiwork strikes agian.

    The “buried” line (in quotes because it ended up being 3″ at most underground) has pulled apart again at a joint and we have a nice little geyser spray up whenver the pump kicks on.  It’s pretty neat, really.  Unfortunately it isn’t neat enough to put benches around and charge people to see, so I’ll need to dig up the joint and repair it soon.

  • Hey TruGreen ChemLawn…

    Dear TruGreen ChemLawn (nice name, btw – “hey kids go roll in the grass that the ChemLawn people took care of!”) 

    Two years ago you offered to get rid of the grubs in our lawn – it was a nice gesture.  Well, we paid you… so it wasn’t that nice.  Even less nice is that the grubs seemed to thrive on whatever you sprayed on them – so thanks for that too.  We ended up using Scott’s GrubEx to really get rid of them.

    Anyway, back to why I’m writing this.  You keep calling us.  We keep telling you to leave us alone and never call again, but you insist.  You also canvas our front door with your propaganda and offers for further service.  WE DO NOT WANT ANY MORE OF YOUR “HELP”, THANKS.   NOW LEAVE US ALONE.

    To top things off, I’m sitting here working today and I look out of my window onto my porch and what do I see?

    That’s right, in addition to the litter you placed on my door Monday you also deemed it neccessary to leave your papers on my porch.  Stop littering on my property!

  • Few Days

    Since it has been a while since I’ve posted a photo…

  • Edward

    Just a quick update on Edward McConaughey – He’s doing great and growing like never before!

  • Some Chef Updates

    Just a few Chef notes…

    A couple weeks ago I reported that I had gotten rid of SWREG in favor of E-Junkie with PayPal and Google Checkout.  Since then I’ve processed a couple of orders successfully so it’s good to know I didn’t break anything.    That’s always a concern of mine when I make changes like these, Murphy has proven to be an evil guy at precisely the wrong times.

    Early last month I decided to give Download.com a try so I signed up and submitted Chef to be listed.  So far it’s showing a whopping 53 downloads.

    The past week has been pretty busy with bug fixes and other support things.  Tomorrow night I’m going to try my hand at connecting to a customer’s PC to see if I can check on a problem they’re having.  Since I haven’t done this before I decided to go with Fog Creek’s Copilot software to (hopefully) get us connected.  I use their (great) FogBugz software for Chef and at work, so I have high expectations for Copilot.

    I just posted 1.3.18 with the bug fixes from the past week.

    I think that’s it!

  • 307,000

    That’s the number of platelets floating around Ana’s body today.  A marked improvement over her previous dismal countings of 7,000 and 10,000.

    So that was the real, first post-spleen-removal test they’ve gotten counts from her on.  Definitely a positive sign.  More tests next week to keep verifying.

    Thanks again to everyone for all of your help, prayers, and good wishes!

  • Morning

    Just a quick update for everyone – Ana is fine this morning, no more of the shoulder pain from last night.

  • Home.

    It’s 2am and we just got back home.  The surgeon that removed Ana’s spleen (and the one that had her go into the ER tonight – errr, last night) actually came in around 1:30 and talked with us and did a quick checkup.  He said that the pain wasn’t due to the gas used in surgery because the xray showed no gas pockets anywhere.  So, the mystery shoulder pain remains that for now.

    Time for some sleep!