The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

  • GAME 1

    Here I sit, watching the player introductions for Game 1 of the 2004 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Saint Louis Cardinals. It should be one hell of a series, quite fitting that these two clubs meet for the 100th Fall Classic. My prediction is the Cardinals taking it in 6, although it wouldn’t be suprising if it goes the full 7 games.

    I originally had plans tonight to go to a dinner theater at an Illinois Winery with Ana. Plans changed when the game time was announced, so Ana took her mother instead of me.

    At some point during the game I have to go outside and get some pictures of the moon for my project, it’s very clear outside and the moon is in the Waxing Gibbous phase. Crossing fingers that I’ll get some good shots.

    GO CARDINALS!

  • Copernicus

    A few weeks ago while I was outside with my telescope for a few hours I was visited by a stray cat. He was pretty curious about what I was doing and stayed around for a while.

    Since monday, this cat has been hanging out on our front porch, sleeping on our chairs out there. It’s driving Dozer and Neo crazy and they frequently stand on their hind legs at the window and stare at it. Ana and I have nicknamed the cat Copernicus, for his liking of hanging around while I stargaze. I sure hope he leaves soon, I don’t want to be tempted to bring him in and give him a home, we’ve already got 2 that happily coexist!

    In other news, watching the Cardinals right now try to secure a game 7. Go Cardinals!

  • Sump Line… again!

    As many of you may recall, we had major trouble this spring and summer getting Construx out to fix the sump line as they agreed to before us purchasing. Well we’ve got a lot of rain today. The basement is dry, but we have a small river out back going to the drain at the end of the street. About 30 seconds after I hear the sump pump going, I see a nice fountain popping up in the back yard.

    I’ve gone out and discovered the pvc sump line has pulled apart a couple inches at a joint, it’s quite apparent they didn’t use any glue on the joint. I’m not sure I can describe how angry I am right now.

  • Dinner and a Tour

    Dave graced us with his presence this evening on his way through Springfield to St. Louis. We gave him the nickel tour of the house before heading out to Smokey Bones for a delicious and filling dinner. It got late pretty quick and he had to get back on the road. Was very nice chatting with you Dave, have a safe drive!

  • Damn Spam

    Some of you may have noticed the comment spam attacks on my blog several times in the past month or so. I just blacklisted the repeated offender (220.93.120.39).

  • Binocular Mount

    The Binocular Mount I purchased for my tripod arrived today. I was pleased to find that it’s the correct size; it’ll be a great help when I’m outside looking at the stars (hopefully tomorrow night).

    Not much is going on this weekend, so it should be pretty relaxing.

  • Faster?

    I’ve finished migrating to a new webserver, the former Windev. There should be a noticable improvement in responsiveness. The only thing left for me to do before I can say the move is complete is to get mailman 100% functional again.

  • Windev’s new home

    It sure feels strange/silly having an emotional attachment to a computer. I spent a few hours this evening getting more software installed on the new pc, Vega. It took a while but it is now doing the automated nightly builds for Chef and has the development environment all setup. As such, I just carried Windev down to the basement with the other slower computers.

    There’s still some data I need to pull off of it, but its job is basically over. The computer that got me through school, stayed up many late nights with me, and helped build numerous applications (including the quite profitable WakeUp! Alarm Clock) is now days away from being my new linux webserver. Adios Windev, you’ve been a trooper!

    Like I said, it sure feels strange…

  • New Memory

    Exchanged my memory stick today. Got home and the new computer booted right up. After installing XP though, I found the onboard nic can send but not receive any data. Good thing I had a new 100Mb card laying around to toss in. On to the visual studio installation…

  • Weekend


    We visited Ana’s sister this weekend in Marshall, Il. Ana helped her work in a booth for the town’s fall festival while I spent the day doing some coding. What I built was a small utility for entering my telescope observation logs and exporting them to wiki-markup, in the format of those found here. I got tired of copy/pasting from old observations so the app should come in handy. It also looks suprisingly good for having been written in just a few hours.