Took Mildred in for a 300,000 meow tuneup yesterday. Got the rabies vaccine updated, and a general checkup. She is performing well. All parts check out at nominal or better for a high-yowlage engine like her.

Then I got my cable hooked up again in time for football season. The Bears training camp opens today and the pre-season starts in two weeks. After all of last year's work, this install went right through with no trouble. It was done early enough for me to watch the majority of the afternoon Sox game.

So naturally I spent all night watching … the Roku, because Amazon added Fringe recently and seasons 1-3 are free with Prime. So I reviewed the end of season 2 and watched the first episode of season 3. This will be much better than getting it from the library and trying to do 22 episodes in a week.

Really, the cable is there for sports and Amazon and Netflix handle all other entertainment much better. I generally don't mind running two years behind broadcasts. Of course, I may record some stuff on the DVR when I can just to avoid the data transfer. We're using Netflix enough now to consume half of our bandwidth cap. Not a problem yet, but close enough to keep a continual eye on. Especially if I'm going to start spending more time on newer, HD shows like Fringe instead of Star Trek and other SD stuff.

Speaking of Star Trek, I've seen several TOS episodes recently that I've never seen before because they were never popular in syndication. Do you, like me, pick up on a sort of community lament for the cancellation of that series after only three seasons? Don't. Lament that most of season 3 sucked. I'd tell you the worst episode, but I'm not done yet and there was a stretch were each was worse than the previous.

A good day off. Now I can get back to work with no gaps in my schedule coming up. Jury duty last week only lasted a couple hours yet forced me to be tentative about my schedule for an entire week.

Just spent many of the last 16 hours in KB953356 hell, which is to say having forgotten about it. I seriously have no remaining Windows troubleshooting skills. Yes, everyone, it is entirely possible to work in IT and be nearly unable to fix your own (much less anyone else's) Windows PC.

Working through the dozens of crapware entries left in the OEM sysprep image now. (It literally has 100 or so, although many are games that uninstall when a single "master" application uninstalls.) All this to have a Windows computer to point to when the cable guy comes to set up new Internet service I'm primarily taking because it still has a negative cost in a bundle. Mind you, I've been watching my bandwidth off and on while working and found that 2/1 Mb service would be just fine for telecommuting. It's entertainment that would suffer.

I've done a couple direct posts to identi.ca recently. Since the stated purpose (see "About" sidebar) of this sub-site is to not let other servers own my data, I should catch up:

1. Stephen Covey dead at 79. Quadrant III news: urgent but not important

   about 3 days ago from web

2. Ever read a few books by 1 author that keeps putting somewhat distinctive in her phrasing & find yourself thinking in suchlike? Thanks, Kerr

   about 4 days ago from web

In related news, Twitter is at it again: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/in-closing-its-platform-twitter-risks-destroying-its-community.php

Generation gap? I've been battling gratuitous bashisms in #!/bin/sh scripts for a decade now. Personally I insist on installing either ksh93 or pdksh on my Linux machines: http://www.netmeister.org/blog/what-unix.html

Somewhere along the line I got a recommendation for Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I was surprised, when my library reservation became available, to find that it was published under the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics imprint and classified as "literature". My fears were justified after beginning to read it. From Michael Wood's review for The New York Review of Books: "Gravity's Rainbow is literally indescribable, a tortured cadenza of lurid imaginings and total recall that goes on longer than you can quite believe.... It is crowded, technical, serious, self-indulgent, frivolous, and very heavy going." Yet I'm encouraged by the first Amazon review that popped up, which contains instructions for reading the book. Maybe I'll speed-read the rest tonight and contemplate another go next year.

Just returned library materials with the new automated check-in system. Over five minutes in a 10 deep queue. Faster for @gailbrdnlibrary, slower for us. I bet the human interaction time is equal with the old way and just got transferred to the users. But the system probably cost a few million dollars so my tax bill will go up, not down from laying off some civil servants.

Then got confused by something I looked up at home being in the new adult non-fiction section, not the main one. Fixed a couple other errors while shelf reading to try to find it nearby, though.

The new belt holster I'm going to try for my current phone arrived today, in a week in which I have no real plans to wear pants again. The phone fits though.

Now working on using the Amazon MP3 credits I've piled up by having things like that not shipped 2-day, while they have albums on sale for 99¢.