genehack.org

Not a great Monday. On the positive side, TheChild went back to school, and seemed to really enjoy getting back to her routine. On the considerably larger minus side, I forgot to take her lunch on my first trip to her preschool, which led to a lot more morning-time dashing around than I had planned for. Due to the extra trip, I was about 10 minutes late to the major planned activity of the day: taking my car into the dealer to get some work done.

I was taking the car in to get a couple of minor things looked at. The first minor thing — a broken hand-brake button — happened a few months ago, and I’ve just been dealing with it. It was annoying, but not obnoxiously so. The other thing — a small, slow transmission fluid leak — was pointed out by my usual oil change guys last weekend when I took the car in for the regular servicing. (It also provided an explanation for that puddle in the driveway…)

So, I sat around in the dealership for about an hour, and got caught up on some reading. Eventually, the service guy motioned me back into his office. He told me that the hand brake thing could be easily and quickly fixed, for about $75. Then he said, “On that transmission thing — man, that’s gonna be a fortune!” (This, by the way, qualifies as a Really Bad Sign.) It seems that at some point, somebody tightened something too much, which cracked the transmission case. Fixing that entails getting a new transmission case, taking the current transmission case (which contains the transmission) out of the car, taking the transmission out of the old case, putting it in the new case, and then putting the new case (and the transmission) back in the car. It also entails me giving them around $2500, which is right around what the car is probably worth on a good day.

(Aside: somebody needs to smack the Kelly Blue Book web site people with the clue stick. Let me put in the damn car info once, then show me all the various types of prices. Idjits.)

Unsurprisingly, I just went for the hand-brake fix. Getting that finished up took another 45 minutes, and then I grabbed some lunch and went home. Spent the afternoon catching up on stuff around the house. Picked up TheChild around 5:30pm, and went out to grab a bite of dinner. Back home for some playtime, and an unexpected bath, before bed.

TheWife rolled back in from her overnight trip around 10pm, and we caught up for a bit before turning in.

Pretty quiet Sunday. I spent a good part of the day working towards another FoF release, TheWife was headed towards NYC for an over-night business trip, and TheChild… well, let’s just say that things have firmed up in her neck of the woods, but it’s still not easy being green.

Started off the day with a community meeting — it’s the 20 year anniversary of the founding of our subdivision (at least, if you tilt your head to the side and squint, you can make it 20 years; in my book we’re closer to 16 or 18…) Had some interesting bits, and it’s always nice to get a chance to interact with your neighbors. I took some pictures as things were going on.

Out for a huge lunch with the family after that, then grabbed a nap. Pretty quiet evening; made a bookstore run, but that was about it — lunch left us so bloated that TheWife and I skipped dinner entirely…

In the PerlPoint posting last week, I mentioned a set of HTML-based slide templates I grabbed from Jessamyn West. Turns out that, contrary to my recollection, they were developed solely by her. You can grab a sample talk for yourself and see how they work — highly recommended.

TheWife had a number of work-related meetings today, so I got to stay home and wear the Mr. Mom hat (and, given the specifics of why the TheChild is at home and not at pre-school, the Mr. Mom extra-large box of wipes and the tube of diaper rash creme…)

We had a pretty calm day; she played (with books and blocks and Little People) and I played (with Perl and SQL and Atom), then we had some lunch, and then we took a nap. Out for dinner in the evening; all in all a good “recharge” day, which I think I really needed.

TheChild still home from school. We’re pretty sure she’s got the rotavirus; it is apparently making the rounds of her preschool.

Very blah day at work; never really got a chance to catch up on sleep from the long night Tuesday, which I think was finally taking its toll.

Alarming poop-related mail of the day from The Wife:

I didn’t know the human body could produce that shade of green. I’m
calling the pediatrician.

Turns out that the purple dye in grape-flavored electrolyte replacement fluid turns green on the way through — a shocking, mid-80s-style neon green.

Aside from the shocking output of the offspring, it was a pretty pedestrian sort of day.

Better late than never: FeastOnFeeds-001 is available for download. Share and enjoy.

Requires a web server capable of running CGIs, Perl, and a whole raft of modules, most of which are so mindblowningly cool you should already have them installed. Has, like, installation instructions and everything, just like real software. Holler if you have questions or problems or (especially) patches.

And now I’m going to go think about the first things I want to add for the 002 release…

TheChild is on the mend — fever broken, spirits restored — but is now suffering from a bout of diarrhea that TheWife described as “apocalyptic”. I was in the shower when the first “incident” happened, but TheWife described it as follows:

She was standing next to me, then there was this “phhhhbbbbttt”
noise, and then a SPLAT as it hit the back of the
diaper. And then she said “toot”.

(Round about now is when people should be thanking their deity of choice that “smellcasts” haven’t been invented yet.)

Luckily, I got to go to work, but I’m told the rest of the day was pretty “incident” free — as was work, fortunately enough. Mainly a gnat-swatting day for me — knocking off a bunch of tiny things. Was planning on getting to a review, but ran out of time and headed home instead.

I’m told the Diarrheal Apocalypse continues, but I’ve managed to avoid personally witnessing any of it. TheChild is still staying home from school, still in good spirits, and still periodically producing vile Lovecraftian horrors from her nether regions, which TheWife heroically dispatches with the aid of some rubber gloves, a spray bottle of dilute Clorox bleach, and a flamethrower.

Speaking of vile Lovecraftian horrors, I tackled the FTP log rotation and analysis system at work today. Actually, first I did a review, of sorts, and had a team meeting, and came very close to throwing something at an interrupting co-worker — but eventually, I got around to fixing the FTP log rotation and analysis system. Well, the rotation half, anyway; the analysis part is planned but not yet implemented.

(For those of you wondering, no, my job really doesn’t deal with logs as much as it seems like it does. Well, okay, yes, actually, it does — but the in the last several weeks I’ve been reworking our FTP and web server logging systems to accommodate several new servers, some of which are located far away, networkologically speaking, behind high firewalls, which require some complicated handshaking to get through — so I’ve been doing the sysadmin/programmer equivalent of crossing my eyes, sticking my tongue out, and trying the thread a particularly difficult needle. Once I finish the FTP analysis crap (I <heart> Class::DBI plus SQLite…), I can hopefully get back to something a bit more interesting, like sticking every file I’m responsible for in CfEngine or going to meetings or something.)