Shadow and I spent Tuesday night in a tent, in my back yard. I wanted to know how she would deal with sleeping in a tent, before I drag her out into the middle of nowhere and discover that she can’t handle it.
She did very well. In fact, I think she did better than I did. I got very cold around 4 in the morning, and she was snoozing quite happily. So I imagine we’re going to do just fine.
This evening I settled on my deck to do some work, and couldn’t “see” the wireless network at all. I know that it has worked out here in the past, and the only thing that changed is that now all my networking stuff is in a steel rack, which, I suppose, is acting like a Faraday cage. So, I went over to CompUSA and acquired a 7DBi antenna to hang off of my AP, in the hopes that it would greatly enhance my signal.
Well, it’s better, certainly, in the sense that I can connect now, and I couldn’t before. But I still am only getting only a signal of 30 out here, whereas inside the back door I get 40. So it’s rather disappointing. I don’t know what is blocking the signal, and I can’t bring the antenna much farther out without spending a LOT of money on cables. And I don’t know how much signal loss there is if I just hack something together with coax. Perhaps I should give it a try and see what happens.
Today we announced the ApacheCon US 2006 Call For Papers (CFP). This is the earliest we’ve ever gotten a CFP out – a fact that we’re *very* pleased about, as it means we have more time to plan. The CFP closes as ApacheCon EU opens, meaning that we can review the submissions at AC EU, and possibly announce the schedule for AC US immediately after AC EU. This would please me enormously. Leaving stuff to the last minute bugs me a lot, and the last several conferences have been characterized by lots of last-minute-ness. Hopefully, this signals a new era.
Reminded by someone on #apache, I dug up my Buzzword Bingo script which, amazingly, still works. File timestamps indicate that I last touched it in July 1998, and that the stuff was written in 1996.
Yes, I know, the “add a word” feature is disabled, due to spammers flooding it with stuff, way back then. Perhaps I should re-enable it and gather buzz-words for the new century.
Today is Sarah’s last day as a 2nd grader. She is happy and sad about this. Happy that vacation is coming, sad that she won’t be at school any more, and that she won’t be in Ms. Cunningham’s class any more. Ms. Cunningham is, as she told me this morning, the best 2nd grade teacher in the world, and I certainly agree. We couldn’t have hoped for a better teacher, and we are hugely grateful. It’s great teachers like this that make kids love learning. And, of course, the principal at Sarah’s school is one in a million, and positively the best principal in the world.
Thanks to jMCg, _Lewellyn, and various others on #apache for examples and inspiration, I now have the following in my .vimrc
” Autocomplete stuff for .php, .pl files, thanks to jMCg, _Lewellyn, et
” al on #apache.
au FileType php,pl :abbrev if if () {<CR>}<ESC>klllli
au FileType php,pl :abbrev else else {<CR>}<ESC>O
au FileType php,pl :abbrev elseif elseif {<CR>}<ESC>O
au FileType php :abbrev /** /**<CR> *<CR>*/<ESC>kA
au FileType php :abbrev switch switch ( ) {<CR><CR>case ‘foo’ :<CR>break;<CR><CR>default :<CR>break;<CR>}<ESC>kkkkkkkllllllla
au FileType php :abbrev function /**<CR> * Description<CR>*<CR>* @param<CR>* @return<CR>*/<CR><ESC>A<CR>function() {<CR>}<ESC>klllllllli
It’s nothing terribly fancy, but it expands if, else, elseif, and function to full code blocks, and, in the case of function, gives a skeleton phpdoc block all ready for useful documentation. And it will save me a lot of typing.
Note that each au starts a new line. I imagine the lines wrap rather differently in your browser window.
WUnderground has added a iCalendar link, so now I have the daily forecast on my laptop and on my Palm. Very cool.
We went out to Chrisman Mill yesterday to check on our cache out there. It had been reported missing, which I didn’t actually believe, since it’s very well hidden and practically indestructible. But we went out there. Sure ’nuff, it was all in great condition, but we moved the first stage to a better place.
It still has the coolest log book of any cache EVER. It’s a shame that only about 6 people have ever seen it.
When I updated the coordinates when I got home, I realized that now it’s only 449 feet away from Chrisman Mill #1, making it, officially, too close to another cache – even though the final cache is quite a lot farther than that away. So now I have to wait for the approver, and see if 1) they notice and 2) they think it’s a problem. I would hate to have to go all the way out there again just to move it a few feet to meet some arbitrary rule. 🙁
I’ve been caching all morning, and had perfectly terrible luck, finding less than half of what I looked for. (5 finds, 8 not-finds.) In several cases there was construction on the site, and in many others, there was some kind of event going on, and dozens of muggles were on the spot. And a few caches were just gone.
But at least I found a few.
Someone had surgery done by a robot. And not just any surgery. Heart surgery. And the assisting human surgeon wasn’t even on the same continent.
Yikes.
(Via Rick, who never blogs anymore.)