Ladies must ride

Here's Loyal Reader Number One riding the Los Gatos merry-go-round. I think the missing word on the sign in the background there is "astride." No side-saddle on this carrousel!

Rode the train today, which turns out to have been a good thing. Loyal Reader Number Five worked in San Francisco today and reported the traffic wasn't too good. It's the Friday of a holiday weekend, so it's certainly no surprise to me.

And the weekend has begun! We're having people over for a swim party/barbecue on Saturday and going to the ward picnic on Monday. In between, I need to fix a laptop (if possible), get the refrigerator fixed (if possible), try to figure something out about the Miata's overheating problem (if there's time), and get Waterlogger on the web (no excuses on this one). Fortunately, I no longer have a Sunday School lesson to prepare. We have a permanent teacher now.

I also don't have a baptism to conduct tomorrow. Our potential new member kind of dropped out of sight this week. I took the Elders over there this evening and she told us she is still interested in the church, so maybe she'll get interested in joining up sometime in the near future.

We're hoping for the heat wave to break Real Soon Now. It's about 10:30 in the evening right now and it's still 81 degrees out, so there's still a long way to go.

What?! It's 10:30? Time for bed. Have a great holiday weekend and I'll see you on Monday.

White house

Here's an old white house. But not just any old white house. No sir. It's the old white house at, umm, I think it's the old white house at Hopewell Furnace. I think. Maybe. Does anybody else remember it?

No post yesterday. I went swimming instead. And I'm not sorry. I went swimming again tonight too. But there's a post today anyway - must show a modicum of concern for the Loyal Readers.

It's been really hot the last few days - in the 100's here in Lardville and the mid-80's in Sunnyvale, and it's only getting down to the 70's at night here, which is quite unusual. The good - the pool water is nice and warm. The bad - they've turned off the air conditioning at work all afternoon the last three days and they're doing it again tomorrow. We have some kind of energy-saving deal with the power company, apparently. It's uncomfortably warm all day. However, to ease the pain a little, they gave us all ice cream this afternoon.

What suckers we are - they broil us alive and we're okay with it because we get a free 20-cent ice cream.

Which brings me to another point. It occurred to me today that our management has been saying for years that engineers are motivated by challenging work, not by money. However, they also say we need to pay large fortunes to top managers in order to attract them and keep them motivated. Apparently, then, managers are motivated by money, while engineers are motivated solely by a challenge. So what motivates me, as an engineering manager? I'm going with money. Challenging amounts of money. Yeah, that's it. I can feel the love already.

Little to no progress on the company. I did check last night and found out my web hosting provider doesn't offer Ruby on Rails, which is an essential component of WaterLogger. I guess it has to go to Larry. That's not a permanent solution, though, since Larry is really on a residential connection that won't tolerate much bandwidth. I see two options:

1) Get a commercial line brought into the house. The price might be high (even prohibitively high - I have no idea), but the strength is that I can do what I want with my server

B) Get different hosting for WaterLogger

Need to decide fairly soon, but in the meantime, it's going on Larry and we're finding some Beta (or probably Alpha, to be more accurate) testers. Really.

And I need to get to bed. See you tomorrow.

Loyal Reader's flowers

Is this the flower picture Loyal Reader Number Five wants me to post? I have no idea, although I know the picture came from her. Thanks, LRN5, and let me know if I got the right picture. It was definitely in my Blog Fodder folder, as she suggested.

Anyway. Hot day today. It's almost 8:00 in the evening and it's still 96 degrees out. That's just not right. Fortunately, it's also not usual around here. I checked the ten-day forecast, and it should be back into the low sixties at night within a couple of days. In the meantime, the scorching weather is at least keeping the pool warm (link question: given how deep the water is where those people in the background are standing, what are the chances this girl is just standing on a surfboard that's lying on the sand?). I just checked, and the water temperature is 85. Not bad.


Nothing much else to report. LRN5 has been interviewing most of the day, so Loyal Reader Number 12 has been here with the family. LRN5's still not home yet, and I don't think we expect to see her for a couple more hours. Long day for everybody concerned.

Time to do other things. See you tomorrow.

Crawling smiler

Or is that smiling crawler? In any case, here's another cute picture of Loyal Reader Number Twelve. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five, who is certain she sent me a beautiful piece of Great Art featuring flowers, and who wonders why it has never been featured on the blog. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly sure where it is, but I'm looking hard for it. Don't worry, LRN5. I'll find it and put it here Real Soon Now. Just keep shooting that Great Art!

The blog is back! And better than ever. Or at least no worse than before. Whatever.

We had a great campout. Clark Fork is a beautiful place - about 6,000 feet in altitude in the middle of a beautiful Redwood forest. There's a pretty little boulder-strewn river running through it, with a beautiful waterfall under a bridge right by the entrance to the campground. We hiked around the water a little bit, but Loyal Reader Number Two was the only one whose shoes permitted him to do a little wading. Other than the numb feet, he enjoyed it. The water was clear, the boulders were picturesque, and the setting was spectacular.

We also drove up to Sonora pass, which is over 9,600 feet in altitude. The road up there is quite steep for the last 3,000 feet of altitude, and it was a nice drive. I'll remember to post the picture I took of the Loyal Readers in front of the sign up on the top.

We also drove up a pretty rustic dirt road to the top of another mountain. The only thing up there was a trailhead for a walk to Sword Lake, a hike we weren't equipped to do. So we drove back down. Maybe we'll go up to the lake next time.

And there definitely will be a next time. Clark Fork: highly recommended. Check out the pictures I'm planning to post on the HRVA website Real Soon Now. Also the Great Art soon to be featured on this blog.

Otherwise, the weekend was quiet. We spent some time on Saturday afternoon relaxing in the pool and spa. Sunday was pretty well occupied with my missionary meeting, church, another missionary meeting, two home teaching visits, and Standards Night. Throw in a couple of meals there, and the day was packed.

Tomorrow was supposed to be our trip to the ball game in San Francisco, but we need to have LRN12 with us, so we're canceling the ball game. None of us are big baseball fans anyway, and we'll be much more comfortable at home.

And it's time for Home Evening to start. See you tomorrow.

The wind blows

Here's possibly the last Alcatraz picture. It's a nice view of The Rock, but it kind of looks like the people down there in the corner are starting to doubt they'll make it alive. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One, of course.

Started my vacation today. The back is in such sad shape that I had no choice. I've been sitting around all day with a heating pad against my back. Sigh.

But the campout must go on! We start tomorrow. There seems to be at least an even chance that I'll be called for jury duty tomorrow, but they told me I can just call them and get rescheduled. Must ... remember ... to ... call.

In any case, though, there will be no posts on Thursday or Friday. We don't think we'll even have electricity Way Out There, let alone Wifi. My Loyal Readers will just have to manage for a couple of days. Besides, maybe I'll finally get some new Great Art.

I have a new candidate for worst music video ever. Although that other one will be hard to beat.

And with that, have a great weekend! See you on Monday.

Ruined lighthouse

Here are the ruins of the Alcatraz lighthouse way back there in the background. As far as I know. Photo once again courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Ouch! My back is killing me! I seem to have pulled a muscle in my upper back a few weeks ago and it hurts like crazy. Not all the time, but whenever I twist or tense that muscle in any way, it feels like I'm being stabbed in the back. Come to think of it, maybe I actually am being stabbed in the back. Better check into that.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day. I have an employee problem or two, but nothing to write home about. The morning drive was a little slower than usual, making me slightly late for my first meeting of the day, but the afternoon was right on schedule.

Only one more commuting day this week. I'm taking a vacation day on Thursday and Friday is my off day. We're going camping at a place called Clark Fork. It's supposed to be very nice, although it appears they don't have any hookups. I need to find the time Thursday morning to buy a new trailer battery, and we'll be just fine with that and the generator. No air conditioning for us, though. On the other hand, we could always choose to stay at one of the many commercial campgrounds in that general area if Clark Fork doesn't work out.

I'm delighted to hear about Loyal Reader Number Five's weekend job. Congratulations! I'm sure something good for weekdays will turn up soon too.

No progress on the Gardenville front today. I'm trying to rest my back and The Dukes of Hazzard are on TV, so there just wasn't any opportunity. Maybe I can get a few things done during the vacation.

Birds in ruins

Here are some birds in the ruins of Alcatraz. Note the cute little baby. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Well, my boss is back and things are pretty much back to normal at work. Which is both good and bad. It's been nice being in charge, but it's also nice not to be in charge anymore.

Good weekend. Remember all those things I needed to do? I did manage to add chlorine to the pool and even swim for a little while. Otherwise, pretty much nothing got done from that list. Loyal Reader Number Two and I spent a couple hours Saturday morning helping a ward member move, and then Loyal Reader Number Four and I bought a pavilion for the deck and she, LRN2, and I put it together on Saturday afternoon. We're delighted to have it and hope to make the deck a little more hospitable in warm weather.

Which we're getting this week. It's supposed to be in the low hundreds pretty much every day this week, and it's only going down to the mid-sixties at night. Not so cool.

I noticed last night that I had forgotten to turn Larry's Samba server back on when I updated the operating system. It turned out to take about three hours to get it working again. When I tried to turn the server on, I discovered that the configuration tool had disappeared from the menus. Searched around for it on the Interweb and discovered how to launch it from the command line, which I did. It appeared to work until I tried to save the configuration, at which time it gave an error message and didn't set anything up. I tried for quite a while to make that work, including trying to manually set up Samba's password file, but none of that worked. During my deep web searches, I learned about a tool called Swat, which is a web-based Samba server configuration program. I downloaded it and spent about an hour getting it to work. During one of my numerous web searches on the subject, I discovered that it comes configured to not work. You have to go into its configuration file and set a flag to enable it. Now why do you suppose the people who made this tool would assume people would download and install it but not want to run it?

Anyway. I finally got Swat working and then had to search around in its documentation for how to get it to set up a Samba server. It was extremely non-obvious, of course, but I finally got it working properly. The really frustrating thing is that Samba configuration was simple, straightforward, and reliable two versions ago, but it's a nightmare now. This is causing me to have serious second thoughts about using Linux, I must say. It's a constant uphill hike.

Anyway. It's working now and things are once again fine. Except that I don't have Cron jobs updating Larry's software on a regular basis. And I don't have the HRVA's email set up either. Maybe those two items will be a little easier to get working. But I doubt it.

I've been reading a couple of books about starting a company. The first is titled, "You Need to be a Little Crazy," by Barry J. Moltz. Moltz is apparently a Zen Buddhist (or Zen Buddhist wannabe) who has started three failed companies and now writes books about how to start companies. It has some interesting moments but also is a little heavy on both trite and discouraging comments.

The second book is called "How to Start a Business in California," by the editors of Entrepreneur Magazine. It was written this year and appears to have some pretty solid information on navigating California's unique requirements, along with some basic how-to and why-to stuff for potential entrepreneurs. There's also a CD-ROM (which I haven't looked at) containing a bunch (199, to be exact) of forms. I expect to find this book a little more useful than the first, but I can't say I haven't gotten anything out of the other.

Still need to come up with task lists for both the web side and the gaming side of the business. Not to mention getting WaterLogger online. There's plenty of Business to do.

I also want to start doing a little swimming a few times a week before it gets too cold to get into the pool. I could enjoy a little aquatic exercise. I'm thinking Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with a possible Friday bonus. Strong like bull!

Past time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Indians welcome

Indians welcome! I don't think I'd necessarily feel all that welcome if I were pulling into the Dock at the Rock. Even if I weren't an Indian. Which I'm not. Mainly. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

Greetings from the train! It's Fairly Empty Friday, and I'm enjoying the trip. No idea whether the freeways are good or bad, and I don't care. I'm seriously thinking of talking to my boss and volunteering to permanently make the Monday and Tuesday evening charts for her on the train. I can post them to the server when I get home. I kind of doubt that she'll be willing to let go, but I think she should.

Anyway. We have a bunch of people coming over this evening for a Small Group Dinner. Loyal Reader Number Four signed up to host if needed, and they finally called her on Wednesday evening with an assignment. Too late, but she got to work immediately and made the arrangements. Next time, we'll just go to somebody else's house.

We're just passing a golf course, and I'm reminded that we still need to hold the First Annual Gardenville Software golf tournament. Need to get Loyal Reader Number Three out here for it. He's watching plane fares and when something unbelievably cheap comes along, we'll do it.

The weekend promises to be relatively busy. There's a Sunday School lesson to prepare and present and ... ummm ... lots of other stuff. If nothing else comes along, I'm sure I can find some work to do on the Miata. And there are a lot of filthy cars. And I still haven't put together Mousey the Junkbot (or is that Junkey the Mousebot?). And I absolutely need to get a version of WaterLogger working on the net, whether we can host it on the remote server or it has to be on Larry for now. And I need to make some progress on learning Ruby. And I have one and a half library books to read. And I need to buy another charger for the iPod that I can keep at work, since there's just not enough battery life to watch TV shows on the train in both directions. And I need to clean up a mess or two on my side of the bed. And the pool needs to be checked and chlorinated. And swum in, for that matter.

Yeah, I guess I'll be able to think of a few things to do.

See you on Monday.

Yet another waterfall

Here's some nature-based Great Art. Hopefully, I haven't used this picture before.

Just call me New Haircut Boy! My hair had gotten so long it was starting to hurt, not to mention look less than optimal. Thank you, Loyal Reader Number Four! As soon as blogging operations are complete tonight, I'm off to the showers to remove the residuals before I hit the hay.

But first, a brief message from our sponsor - me.

Fine day at work today. I went to some meetings, scheduled other meetings, ate lunch, and talked to people. How much better does it get than that? Taking care of business, baby. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Bad ride home, but it was offset by the fact that we had sushi as an appetizer for dinner. So it all works out. Besides, the morning ride was fairly short, and the Law of Freeway Equalization states that the sum total of the round-trip commute hours on any given day is a constant. I have no idea how that works out, but it pretty much always does. Tomorrow is Train Day, so the LoFE doesn't apply.

Well, the Creative Muse is done for the night and my neck itches, so it's time to hit the showers. See you tomorrow.

Canoe

Here's some of Loyal Reader Number Two's old artwork. Very cool, LRN2. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Four.

Pretty quick post tonight. I left work a few hours early just because my afternoon meeting was canceled and I wanted to go swimming. I came home and went swimming. Very nice. Otherwise, not much has happened. I have to leave for my Wednesday evening meeting in about half an hour, though, so the time is actually fairly short.

Loyal Reader Number Five did some more interviewing today. She generated some interest from an entomology museum or some such place. I don't think she's spoken with them yet, but I think she should watch Night At the Museum before she takes the job. Just a thought.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two went to an ice-blocking party tonight. I wonder whether anybody other than Californians ice-blocks. Somehow, I doubt it. For my Loyal Readers who aren't familiar with the concept, you buy a block of ice at the grocery store, carry it to the top of a hill, sit on it, and ride it to the bottom. Also break your arms and legs some of the time. Sounds like fun, no?

LRN5 was looking over my shoulder and mentions that it's not just a bug museum. It's the California Academy of Science, and they do lots of things besides look at dead bugs. Dead animals, for instance. Watch the movie first, LRN5.

Better quit now. See you tomorrow.

Headband

Here's Loyal Reader Number Twelve with her headband on. Those things look uncomfortable to me. But all the baby girls wear 'em and beauty knows no pain, I guess.

No post yesterday. I was going to use the Wonders of Blogger earlier today, but didn't even get a chance to do that. Sigh.

So let's recap. It was a good weekend, as weekends go, which is generally pretty well. I know I was busy the whole time but I don't really remember what I did. Lots of playing with Loyal Reader Number Twelve, as I recall.

How long have I had amnesia? Even since I can remember!

The weekend moving trip to Big Bear was sort of a bust. They enjoyed being there but didn't move anything. They did get to have a barbecue and visit with Loyal Readers Numbers Six (of course), Three, and Fifteen. We enjoyed keeping the baby. I wanted to use the pool but never got to do it. I wanted to use it last night and again tonight but never got in then either. Sigh. Thwarted plans all the time. I guess I need to make easier-to-achieve plans. But what could be easier to achieve than putting on a swimsuit and walking out into my own back yard?

Loyal Reader Number Five has been busily going out on job interviews. She has a few hot prospects but no solid offers yet. She did find a place to live, however. Here's a picture. They get the keys tomorrow and move in I-don't-know-when. It looks like it will be a nice little place. They even get a garage!

Let's see, is there anything else? Somebody brought a great big bag of Boston Baked Beans candy to work on Monday. I had way too many of them. I love BBBs.

Umm . . . nothing else comes to mind right now, so I'll go get ready for bed. See you tomorrow.

Rock roof

Here's a roof at Alcatraz. Along with some birds. It's a twofer - Great Art and Birds! I think we all agree it doesn't get any better than that. Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One.

I'm back on the train today, for the first time in almost a month. I like Fridays on the train - there are many fewer riders (apparently, lots of companies have off Fridays) and Friday afternoon traffic is generally unpleasant. I hope to quit driving on Fridays.

I've been enjoying Blackadder on the iPod. I'm currently watching Blackadder Goes Forth - the fourth and final season, set in World War I. I had never seen most of the shows from that year before. They're great. Highly recommended. I borrowed the shows from Loyal Reader Number Five. She only had two of the four DVDs when she came to visit (seasons three and four, including Blackadder's Christmas Carol, possibly my very favorite Christmas movie), and I'm hoping she'll find the missing discs soon. And lend them to me.

Not much else to report today. I dragged out of bed very early, rode the train comfortably to work (got my unread email count down from about 150 to 85, which is good progress!), had a nice, brisk walk to the office, worked like a dog, hitched a ride over to the bus stop (I wanted to walk, but somebody offered, and I hated to turn him down), and went home. The rest of the evening ought to consist of dinner, Monk, Psych, and some game engine work.

Also need to repair Loyal Reader Number Two's computer. It's been overheating to the point of shutting down for quite a while now, and we haven't been able to figure out why. I would have suspected the CPU fan, but it appears to be working just fine. Time to put on the detective hat and get it fixed.

I have to attend a work meeting or two Saturday morning - by phone, of course. Undesired but necessary. That will conflict with my tentative commitment to help work on my friend Lyle's electricity, but he doesn't know I was planning to come over yet, so I'll just reschedule.

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Five went down to Big Bear for the weekend today. They're going to help the Loyal Readers move out of their new house. They've decided to make a break from the Mountain, and Loyal Reader Number Six's parents have kindly agreed to take over the house. They're working on getting it rented out, though, so it needs to be empty pretty soon. We have Loyal Reader Number Twelve with us for the weekend. We hope she enjoys staying with Grandma and Grandpa. Not to mention Uncle LRN2 and Aunts Loyal Pets One and Two. Gulp.

Back to the videos. Have a great weekend.

Birthday boy

Here's the birthday boy blowing out the candles! Happy birthday, Loyal Reader Number Two! Full disclosure: he's actually blowing out the candles on my cake a couple of months ago in this picture, but the principle is the same.

Went home from work early to be with the family on the birthday. It was nice being here. I went swimming briefly and otherwise hung around. Very relaxing.

No progress on the game engine. LRN2 and his buddy have been using all the computers all afternoon, so there's been no opportunity. On the business front, though, Loyal Reader Number Five bought a couple of books on Cascading Style Sheets and she's working on some of the tutorials now. She's making some pretty good-looking pages.

Otherwise pretty quiet today. I'm working tomorrow on my off Friday, which is just wrong. I'm taking the train to beat the nasty Friday afternoon traffic. Wish me luck!

See you tomorrow.

Rock truck

Here's the fire truck on Alcatraz (AKA "the rock"). Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number One, using Loyal Reader Number Four's camera.

Wednesday go-to-meetin' night, as usual. The full-time missionaries reported that Kathryn, the nice young woman we visited last Saturday is going to join the church, with her baptism scheduled on the 25th of this month. Everybody was pleased about it. Of course.

No joy last night compiling Delta 3D. I'm giving up on the Linux version and will try the Windows version to see if I can get it to compile a tutorial. It's digging its own grave around here with the impossible installation. In the meantime, Loyal Reader Number Three was able to install the Microsoft tools and compile one of the sample games. We still need to go through the tutorials and see how easy it is to program.

Loyal Reader Number Five went on a job interview this evening. She feels like she's way overqualified and has a good chance of getting the job. Let's hope for the best! I mentioned Loyal Reader Number Six at my meeting tonight to see if anybody knows of available work in his line. Nothing yet, but something will come up.

I just saw the worst music video ever. Let me know if you agree. As opposed to the best music video ever.

Gotta go. See you tomorrow.

Cannes at night

Here's a night scene in Cannes a few years back. It was usually pleasant there in the evening.

I didn't mention yesterday a couple of important weekend events. My father flew in on Saturday and he, Loyal Reader Number Four, and I attended a memorial service for my late Aunt Bea. It was kind of a hippy funeral - saxaphone music and poetry, among other things - but it was very touching, as it consisted mostly of people talking about how Bea had affected their lives. I learned a lot about her and certainly came to appreciate her life more than I had before.

The Loyal Father is having a bit of skin cancer removed tomorrow. Good luck, LF!

The week has been normal so far. I'm trying one more time to get Delta 3D installed on Larry. Now that 32-bit Linux is on there, I have reasonably high hopes that I'll be able to get everything on and working this time. Wish me luck.

Better get to it now. See you Wednesday.

Loyal Readers at EFY

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Seven at EFY this year. Photo courtesy of LRN7, presumably shot by someone else with her camera. Thanks for the picture, LRN7!

Very Short Shrift tonight. I'm am SO sleepy it's not easy to even sit up straight. I stayed up pretty late last night, working on reinstalling Linux on Larry. It has Fedora 7 now, and it's working just fine. Mostly. There are a few strange things, such as the fact that I can't install anything in the upper and lower panels on my desktop on the terminal directly connected to the computer, but I can in the terminal accessed from VNC. In fact, when I try to install applets in the session running on the terminal, they show up in the VNC window. Weird-o-rama.

Accomplished some over the weekend. We finally borrowed a trouble code reader on Friday so we could diagnose LRN1's car's check engine light, reduced gas mileage, and malaise of spirit. While I was working on installing the reader's software on my laptop, I discovered that LRN1's car has an older version of the diagnostic system and wouldn't work with the machine I had borrowed. We looked it up on the internet and found a way to pull codes using a jumper wire and a 12-volt trouble light. It turned out to be the mass airflow sensor, which was unable to pass its oddly-named "goose" test, which apparently means full-throttle acceleration. We bought a new part at the local Kragen and installed it in about five minutes. The car has all its power back and doesn't appear to be reporting a problem anymore. Woo hoo!

We helped the person move on Saturday morning. She wasn't even nearly prepared, so we did what we could do and left her to finish moving the thousands of tiny little unpacked things herself. Hate to do that, but you have to be ready if you want help.

Didn't fix the water softener. I'll get to that next weekend, presumably.

Also didn't reinstall the game engine. Maybe tomorrow night.

Anything else that happened on the weekend will have to wait until tomorrow. See you then.

Rollout

Here's an old Proton rollout. This artsy-looking (it's out of focus, anyway, and that's certainly artsy) picture actually appeared on the ILS website back in the day. I mock it, but it's actually one of my favorite campaign pictures.

No messing with the game engine today. I've been too busy watching Jay Leno videos on the internet. Oh, and entertaining some guests a little bit earlier. Our friends the Fallons are having a bit of a health emergency with her father, who lives with them. He's in the hospital right now, and the family needs to rally 'round. So the Loyal Readers hosted their triplet sons for the day and we had the whole family over for dinner this evening. It was the Mom's birthday today, and we had cake and ice cream and a few cards. I'm glad they could come over.

Nothing much else today. I worked and came home. On the other hand, tomorrow is shaping up to be extremely busy. I need to work on Loyal Reader Number One's car, help somebody move, fix the water softener, go visit somebody with the missionaries, and do a little work on the Gardenville/Spinfo conglomerate. Or maybe that should be juggernaut. Oh, and host my father, who is arriving sometime tomorrow - we don't know when. We're going to his brother's late wife's memorial service on Sunday, and he's staying with us tomorrow night. That ought to be enough to keep me off the streets and out of the pool halls.

Better get to bed. See you on Monday.

Twerp

There's the little twerp now. It's great to have her here again. Also Loyal Reader Number Five, courtesy of whom this photo comes to us.

I've been working on Delta 3D again and have decided it can't be installed on 64-bit Linux. An exhaustive web search has confirmed this. Not good. So, I've definitely decided to install 32-bit Linux on Larry over the weekend. Morrowlife may be down for a few hours, but my Loyal Readers will survive, I suspect. Reconfiguring everything will probably be extremely ugly. But it must be done.

In the meantime, I've started trying to install Delta 3D on Curly, my Mac. It's not easy either. So far, I have one or two of the dependencies installed, and it's clear that each and every one will be a major pain. Need to figure it out, though.

- A few minutes later -

No I can't. I can't get anything to work. Curses! I'm trying again on Larry. This time, I've downloaded all the dependencies from the Delta 3D site. If this doesn't work, it's 32-bit on Saturday. In the meantime, Loyal Reader Number One is installing the Windows version on Loyal Reader Number Two's machine. Stupid Delta 3D.

Maybe I'm not really meant to develop video games after all. But I think I am. Not to mention useful homeschooler applications.

Otherwise, nothing much new. I switched cars with Loyal Reader Number Four again. I've been driving to work much more often because I need to stay late, and I just can't afford to put the miles on the Honda. Plus, the Miata is still overheating. Need to get that fixed. Soon.

Time for bed already. See you tomorrow.

River

Here's the river yet again, this time in closeup. Great art indeed.

No post yesterday. I was . . . thinking. No, actually I was trying to install Delta 3D on Larry, my Linux machine. What a hard thing! I had to install numerous dependencies. Some of them were available via Yum, but I had to download and hand-install a bunch of them. After I spent roughly four hours finding and installing dependencies, it still won't compile. It says it's still missing some things, and I can't seem to figure out where to get them. Might have to go to the Delta 3D forums for a little help there. Nobody else seems to be having that problem, though, as there are no posts on the topic yet.

I think part of my problem is that I'm running the 64-bit version of Fedora. I should never have done that. I knew 64-bit Windows was a disaster area, but I thought Linux was a little more advanced than that. Apparently not. I'm still afraid to change it because I have so much custom configuration done. I think I'll have to bite the bullet and do it, though. I'm sick of these problems. And I think Fedora has stopped supporting Core 5 now. Maybe this weekend.

Of course, the Windows version of Delta 3D comes with pre-compiled binaries, and I'm sure it's even easy to compile. Stupid Windows.

They're here! That's right, Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve. They got here yesterday evening. We're enjoying the visit so far, and LRN12 is even starting to not cry when she looks at us! She even let a couple of us hold her briefly last night, and I'm sure that will get better with time.

LRN5 is helping me with some of the organizational aspects of the software company. We need to figure out the best cheapest way to make it a real company. I really want it to be an equal partnership between the five of us too - let everybody have the same stake in it. It will be interesting to see what she suggests.

It's Wednesday Go to Meetin' night, so I'll quit. Wish me luck with this lousy game development system. I'll get it figured out. See you tomorrow.