Why I Love My Job

I love my job. I like the people I work with, the work that I do, and the boss I report to. But wait, there's more!

You gotta love a job where people play cribbage at lunch and bring in Krispy Kreme donuts for coworkers to enjoy for free!

The idea behind this one was a fund raiser card... you spend $10 on a card that allows you to get a dozen regular glazed KK donuts when you buy a dozen.

Too bad I'm not supposed to have donuts.... :-(

Free "Black" - Christian Fiction / Suspese Novel

Ted Dekker has been kind enough to offer "Black" to be read for free, online. "Black" is part of the "The Circle" trilogy. The free ebook requires Macromedia Shockwave Player.

Caveate Lector: you'll want to read the other two books when you finish "Black".

I won't ruin it for you... We own all three, and Cathy has not finished yet, so all I can say is that I was stirred to consider how I am living my life as a Christian by the time I was partway through the third book.

And, I've really enjoyed the reading.

Oh, if you decide to purchase the books for yourself, there is a 50% coupon for "Black" on the web site (look under "special offers" when you click on "Black") and a $3 coupon for any book in the trilogoy.

Update on Cathy's Liver

OK, this news is a couple days old for those of you praying for Cathy... She got more results back from the doctor, and apparently she has "slightly elevated alpha proteins" which is a possible flag for liver cancer. It is only slightly elevated, and her sonogram showed nothing out of the ordinary, so we're not worried about it.

The big news is, contrary to her previous intentions, Cathy has scheduled herself for a liver biopsy. This will give us a much clearer picture of what to expect. If her liver is already damaged after having HCV less than two years, Cathy may decide to undergo the year treatment. This would involve weekly, self-administered shots of Pegasys (pegylated interferon alfa 2a) and Copegas (ribavirin). It's a good thing they're self-administered, as needles just plain freak me out. Recente studies (2004) indicate that the cure rate is about 46% for Cathy's HCV genotype.

We'll update you as we know more, of course.

New Way to Post Photos on Blogger

There's a way to post Blogger photos without going through the Hello Blogger Bot now.

Basically, when you create a post you can use the built-in image upload tool just by clickon the photo button (you know, the one that used to say they were working on it?).


This is a great improvement... and I am gratified that the very first uploaded photo was the cat Bruce. I'm hoping that means that categories are coming next.

Geeks and Nerds Are Better

One of our conversations about wedding photos grew into a discussion of how geeks make superior boyfrieds. I just got our wedding photos digitized and printed at Costco, right? While the resolution is not quite what I asked for (I'm hoping they'll make it right by re-scanning the negatives), we do have our wedding photos now. We got one CD with each roll of film, and during the course of explaining to Cathy why I was unsatisfied with the scan resolution of our photos the conversation turned to our early years of marriage and our engagement.

Cathy lived a very different life before she accepeted God's offer of forgiveness and rescuing from the sin that entangles all of us. As such, she knew some people who had also left an entirely different life behind to embrace the good news offered by Jesus Christ. Some of these friends are girls, and one of them was a bridesmaid.

Cathy brought up a conversation that these two ladies had while planning our wedding; apparently, they both thought that geeks would make better boyfriends. That is to say, they concluded that they used to think "bad boys" made for interesting boyfriends, but not for extended periods of time. For the man who is husband material, reach for the geek.

Naturally interested (I am a geek), I asked Cathy for some specifics. She indicated that your average geek would be interesting, interested in his woman, likely more intelligent, able to cope with true intimacy, and be a caring, concerend provider who intended to grow old with the woman who loves him. I added that geeks also had the advantage of holding successful, stable jobs; apparently that did come up in converstaion but was overshadowed by the interpersonal aspects of geek-girl relationships.

Coincidentally, the New Yord Daily News noted why some women select nerds as hubands (printer-friendly) and the benifits of doing so. Cathy doesn't wear t-shirts, or I would get her one of these (photo).

Free Wireless Internet at "It's a Grind"

I'm finding free wireless hotspots very appealing these days. I'm thinking about switching to Cingular Wireless for the wireless service... But, anyway, as the post title implies, I'm telling you about another free wirelss hotspot.

The coffee house franchise "It's a Grind" offers free wireless Internet access while you sip your coffee.

The location closest to us is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, so Cathy & I may spend more time there. It's not too far out of the way from our communting route, and the combination of good coffee and wireless Internet access is quite a draw... :-)

More on "No Time"

Well, more of the same... I was forging ahead on emailing my SQL backup reports when, at 13:30 today, our customer service system stopped responding. I hear someone comlain, "hey, I can't log in!" This was followed by my manager saying, "hmm... did someone change /etc/profile? ... Oh, /lbin/copyex is not responding." A few seconds later, I discovered that the entire /lbin filesystem was just plain gone.

Three hours later, I think we've figured out what happened... two disks in our three-disk RAID5 array died within a minute of each other. In terms of probability, that's a fairly unlikely scenario.

(For the unitiated, non-UNIX / non-Apple user... that's bad. It's like setting up a backup for your hard disk drive, and having the hard disk and the backup go bad at the same time.)

It'll be a long weekend for somebody... And I was planning on blogging an insight I read in Mark 9. And, I have been so busy I haven't even been able to keep up with my friends. Maybe next week...

Update: it is 17:30... and our server is back up and running. Maybe I'll have a nice weekend afterall.

No Time!!

I have had absolutely no time recently! Our personal web site, http://leeandcathy.com, is terribly outdated; it just redirects to the blog for now. I had plans to install my own web photo album (to get away from possibly objectionable materials on some other photo sites) and to my this blog over. If Blogger doesn't get categories soon, I'm gonna scream, or write my own (but I don't have time).

At home, I am struggling to keep up with the cats, the remodeling, the dishes... whew... I need a vacation! Cathy is just as tapped out... I think tonight we'll take a break and watch a movie... maybe "Hitch" starring Will Smith.

Transact-SQL Backup Scripting

Boring technical stuff ahead...

Lord, have mercy! I just spent the entire day trying to update the SQL backup script we use at work. Since I wrote it, hardly anybody else around the office understood it.

I finally decided that the end user must be able to read the backup log and understand, at a glance, whether their backup worked or not. That took me a long time to do, but I finally managed to get a summary report that makes sense. It simply states "suceeded" or some other state with no further details. Frankly, I'm glad if most clients check their backups at all; I do not really expect them to read the backup report beyond the date and the status.

Previously, my coworkers would come get me everytime we went to restore a client's database since they did not understand the backup mechanism. I'm going to teach our in-house tech class next week, so I'll be planning on explaining how the restore works, and how to check the backups.

Next: automatically emailing the backup log to an end user from within Microsoft SQL Server; ugh!

Audio Blog phone number changed

If you were thinking about using Audioblogger, the phone number has changed to 415-856-0205, a San Francisco, CA number.

Outlets and Fathers

I spent part of the weekend replacing the electrical outlets and light switches in the house. I went for the decroative, flat light switches and the traditional white power outlets. The wiring in our apartment is so screwy that there is no consistent color coding, and sometimes the obvious hot wire is actually the return. Well, if you are going to play with electricity, just turn off the breaker and be careful! Cathy likes the new outlets and the bright white covers, so all the work paid off!

We finally got prints of our wedding photos, but I've been so busy I haven't checked out the digital scans of the negatives yet. Cathy seemed to be happy with some of our prints, although Costco did mess up the order... guess I'll be going back this week.

I got to talk to my father this weekend, all the way over in Taoyuan, Taiwan. You can think of Taoyuan like the Ontario, CA of Taiwan. Man, cell phone technology is great... I'll probably never change my cell number just because my family has it and calls me infrequently. I can't believe my dad is 70!

We also got to talk to my father-in-law... I really love that guy! After we ran out of truly meaningful things to say, he told me the joke about Billy Graham and the Chauffeur. What a guy!

Adventures in Photo Archiving

I decided to digitize our wedding photos, but all we have is the negatives. Now what? I started researching... What do normal people do with their time? I go overboard tryign to figure out how to preserve my photos for generations to come.

I decided that it would be wise to dig out our wedding photos and actually get some prints. Yes, that is correct; Cathy & I have never seen our wedding photos! When we got married, we were quite poor (comparatively) and could not afford a photographer. Friends and family took photos, and that is what we have. About four months after we were married, we managed to set aside enough money to get the film developed, but we did not have the money to get prints. And so the 35 mm film sat in storage for 8 years and 4 months.

Since getting used to digital cameras, I have become spoiled by the ability to take near-perfect shots. I just take 3~5 photos and discard the ones I don't like! Looking at the negatives from our wedding was quite painful, as many had thumbs or other digits covering part of the lenses.

I decided I should convert these 35mm negatives to digital files. Last Thursday, June 9th, Cathy & I ran some errands. On a lark, while we were in Circuit City returning a 802.11b wireless router, I purchased an Epson Perfection 2580 scanner with a built-in, automatic feed film scanner. They didn't have one in stock, so I took the display model as an open box at a discount. I was quite happy with my deal!

I figured that most digital photo printers probably produce 4 x 6 prints at 300 dots per inch (dpi), so surely my Epson could scan that, right? It turns out that desktop scanners with transparency adapters can scan negatives at about 200 dots per inch. I would have kept the scanner, but I realized during the setup Circuit City gave me the wrong accessories bag. I couldn't use the scanner!

So, last Friday, after a long day at work, I drove back to the store and returned my scanner. They offered to let me pick up a new box in Fullerton (bit of a drive), where they had three in stock. I was happy with that, and went to Fullerton. The Fullerton Circuit City was nonplused about my attempt to exchange equipment there, but they did it anyway as customer service. I went home happy.

I needed some film to scan! Saturday was an overcast day and unsuitable for the painting I planned, so I spent 7.5 hours in the garage, doing some much-needed cleanup and organization. When I was done, I could locate my negatives easily enough! That evening, after dinner, I sat down to do some scans! But, to my surprise, the scanner's 35mm feeder wouldn't take the film! I troubleshoot computers for a living; how hard can it be?

I finally concluded that the scanner was defective and drove back to Circuit City (in Fullerton!) with my laptop. I showed the Circuit City guy what it was (not) doing, and they gave me another one. We set that up at the customer service desk, and the replacement didn't work! I was really beginning to wonder about my capacity to scan film. But then a stranger walked up and said he had the exact same scanner, and it works pretty good! He kindly offered to try the scanner and concluded it was not working. After burning through Circuit City's stock of Epson Perfection 2580 scanners... I thought about just getting my money back, but I settled for the HP Scanjet 3970 they had in stock. I set it up that night and scanned a couple photos, but I was not happy with the results.

I decided that scanning film with consumer scanners is for the birds. On Sunday, after church, I took some film to Ritz Camera to see if they could point me in the right direction. It just so happens that Ritz will scan cut negatives at 75 cents each. So, $20 later I got 25 pictures scanned to CD-ROM. The film was from a disposable camera, so the quality was poor, thus the scan was poor! At that rate, though, I could not afford to scan all the film I have!

After doing some searches on the Internet, I found several online photo services that would scan 35mm negatives at high enough resolutions to produce good 4 x 6 photos. Scanning 230 photos would cost be $110, which slightly less than what the scanner cost me (and take a lot less work on my part). However, it is my understanding that Costco will give you photo CDs for a nominal fee when you develop prints. It is very likely that I will return my scanner for store credit (I need to replace that router) and just get my photos developed and digitized at Costco. Whatever I want to scanned at higher resolutions can then be sent off to an online shop.

Update on Cathy - Good News & Bad News

Cathy has both good news and bad news.

The bad news is that Cathy has Hepatitis-C type 1a, the hardest to treat and least likely to be curable. So, we'll probably have to deal with this for the rest of our lives.

The good news is that the virus count in Cathy's liver is one-seventh (1/7) of what would be considered "bad"... So, all things considered, Cathy's healthy.

Keep Up: Stay in Touch!

I just got a call from my sister-in-law, Ruby! I hadn't heard from my brothers in what seemed like years! Apparently, she did not have a correct email address for me. For those of you who haven't noticed, my email is located just under my profile on our main blog page.

Schaivo Autopsy

Terri Schaivo's autopsy shows us that no murder was committed by the removal of her feeding tube, which is the real story to me, but the media is focused on dubious claims that the autopsy proves Michael did not abuse his former wife. Why?

I heard the anouncement, like everybody else, about Terri Schiavo's autopsy results. What I find interesting is that, from the morning until the evening, reports went from "autopsy shows profoundly atrophied brain" to "massive brain damage with no sign of abuse."

When I heard the report, the doctor said that exams from over a decade ago showed no sign of abuse. He pointedly avoided saying the autopsy could tell anything about whether Terri Schaivo was abused or not. Yet a lot of emphasis is placed on how the autopsy supposedly shows there was no abuse 15 years ago. Hmm...

Now, I'm not saying that Michael Schiavo abused his now-deceased wife. But I do want to point out that "the media" has latched on to, and distorted, references to lack of evidence of abuse. The autopsy could not show it and does not tell us one way of the other. Yet news reports keep chanting the mantra that "the autoposy proved that there was no abuse."

The fact is we don't know if there was abuse or not. In my mind, whether Michael abused Terri is not the point, but the autopsy was incapable of telling us either way. Listening to news reports makes me what agenda "the media" is pushing... my gut feeling is an attempt to embarrass those that the media label "the religious Right", and perhaps an attack on President Bush (since he made a stand for life), but I'm not sure on that one.

The debate over Terri Schaivo's feeding tube polarized over right-to-lift versus right-to-die, but I think the focus was misplaced. For example, whether I would expect my wife to pull the tube on me would depend on a few things:

1. my value as a living being made in the image of God
2. my right to explicitly refuse treatment, including life-saving treatment
3. the attempt at treatments, including high-risk treatments, to heal me
   
4. my metaphysical presence in my body versus the sustainment of my physical shell

To unpack that a bit... human beings, made in the image of God, are required to be treated as valuable... thus, Cathy could not pull my tube just because it was more convenient, or to end my suffering from a quality-of-life stance. Life is life, and life is valuable, regardless of the so-called quality.

Let's say that I would not desire to live as a crippled and mentally diminished person, a burden to my wife who would need constant care. Well, I do not seek to live this way, certainly I do not seek it! Yet if I were to survive some condition with diminished mental capacity, I am still a valuable human being.

That said, if I explicitly state that I do not want extreme measures to keep my body alive in the hope that I wake up after 10 years, I have the right to refuse treatment. If I am convinced that treatment would be ineffectual and I am going to die anyway, I have the right to decide to live as long as my condition allows.

If my desire to refuse treatment is not expressed when my wishes can be made clear, then we must default to doing whatever necessary to save life. This includes treatment attempts that may kill me in the process of attempting to heal me. But in every case, we should never seek out death; that is the perogative of God alone. Under these conditions, if there is any reasonable doubt that I am still alive, then the preservation of life must rule.

That being said, there is a difference between keeping my physical body alive and my metaphysical presence in my body. In Terri Schaivo's case, the parents were convinced that Terri was "there" in body a physical and metaphysical sense; Michael Schaivo was convinced otherwise. The media coverage and the evidences presented were so contraversial and contradictory that only a first-hand investigation would allow an outsider to decide. Nonetheless, the autopsy did show that the chances Terri was still "there" are next to none. Assuming that this was determined prior to the autopsy, all that remained was the physical shell for Terri's spirit. Thus, the removal of Terri Schaivo's feeding tube was not murder, but merely the end of sustaining an empty shell.

I still feel very sorry for Terri Schaivo's parents. I still disagree with Michael Schaivo's argument that "Terri wouldn't want to live this way." But, while mistakes were made in this case, no murder was committed by the removal of her feeding tube. That much, the autopsy has told us.

Yikes! Did You Feel That Quake?

Yikes! my office just shook pretty hard a minute ago. I checked for recent activity at the Pasadena US Geological Survey but nothing is registered yet. Ah... it is listed at US Geological Survey site at http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/117-34.htm, and on the Southern California map... http://earthquake.usgs.gov/shakemap/sc/shake/... and Pasadena is listing it now.

It was only about four or five seconds, but the jolt was definitely felt here! If you felt it, you may want to report it to the US Geological Survey.

Angry Alien Flash Movies

Jen Shiman of Angry Alien Productions creates 30-second reenactments of movies starring bunnies. I found "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Titanic" pariticularly funny!

Internet Supermarket

Last night it was an Internet sandwich shop; today it is wireless Internet at Whole Foods Market.

It seems that more businesses are offering free Internet access as a perk for having your business. If this keeps up, I wouldn't be surprised to see open, public wireless paid for by local government in the next five to ten years.

I had to install a new server for an electrical service company in Glendale today. I left the client at 1 P.M., and as I had such a long drive home, I might as well stop for lunch. Cathy & I were looking for a Whole Foods Market to purchase jasmine oil, so I went to the Glendale location.

Well, Whole Foods Market offers free wireless Internet (open, unencrypted proxy) for your shopping experience... Cathy called, and she was on her way to the Pasadena store! I'll be leaving here to meet her and eat lunch together. Isn't that grand? It is acutally kinda romantic, meeting for lunch in the middle of the workday. :-)

Cathy just called to tell me to avoid the 605 South after lunch. Isn't that sweet?

Internet Cafe

Here's my first experience accessing the Internet from a cafe. OK, not a cafe per se, but a sandwich shop in Fullerton.

Cathy and I went grocery shopping and went a little out of our way to Fullerston. There's a diner named "Lee's Sandwiches" so we decided to stop on in. Very interesting food... Vietnese influence + French baguettes meets Subway.

Anyway, for every buck you spend, they give you five minutes of Internet access. That's a very interesting business model! So, I figured, "hey, I think I'll blog that!" It would certainly have a draw on me if I had to eat lunch around Fullerton on a regular basis. They subscribe to ICU, which offeres Internet Cafe access on a timed basis.

It is interesting how many people walk up to these LCD screens and poke at them, then walk away. If I do open a diner, I will have to keep this in mind!

Tabbed Browsing in Internet Explorer with MSN Toolbar

Most people are porbably still using Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) and have not enjoyed the advantage of tabbed browsing or other advances in browsers recently. Faster page loads and tabbed browsing are two reasons why I prefer Firefox over MSIE. This week, however, Microsoft added tabbed browsing via a toolbar add-on.

The MSN Toolbar extends MSIE with tabbed browsing, highlighted search and desktop search of your computer. One of my favorite features in Firefox is highlighted search words. MSN Toolbar adds this feature for MSIE; in other words, when you search for "free donuts" on the Internet, pages you view from the search have the words "free" and "donuts" highlighted.

TIP: You can also highlight words on any page just by
typing in the search bar and, instead of hitting ENTER,
click on the highlighter icon.

MSN Toolbar also integrates Microsoft Desktop Search. I have been using Copernic for some time now; it is free and does the job well. If you have not started using a search product for your desktop, I highly recomend you get one. If you are using MSIE for the Internet and MS Outlook for email, you should consider using Microsoft's Desktop Search product, since it is integrated with the MSN Toolbar. I am giving it a try to see how it stacks up against Copernic... So far, Copernic is better for initial indexing and cross-platform support, but Microsoft's search can be used as a toolbar in MS Outlook very easily.

While I still think Firefox is superior to MSIE, and the MSN Toolbar needs a LOT of polish and keyboard shorcuts, it is a step in the right direction. You may want to download the MSN Toolbar at http://toolbar.msn.com/ if you use Internet Explorer. As I previously mentioned, Maxthon does offer more features, but the MSN Toolbar is "official". I expect MSIE version 7 will include other "killer-app" features that will conpete directtly with Firefox; but in the mean time, use the MSN Toolbar.

Patriotic Corn Maze in Corona, CA

I saw this satellite photo of a corn maze in Corona. When I saw this, I thought of the Hays.

Image Source: DigitalGlobe

Look at the Cuddly Kitty!

Zechariah is our $1000 kitty! She has gotten much more cuddly and loving since her operation in November of 2004. We almost lost Zechariah to a growth on her liver. Now, it is as though she were experiencing a second kittenhood!

New Top-Level Domains

Wouldn't it be great if you could tell if a web site was "adult-only" just by looking at its name? New top-level domain spaces may address this very issue.

Several new top-level domains are likely to be approved at ICANN. Current valid top-level domains include .com, .net, .org, .gov, .mil, .biz, .info, and two-letter country codes (like .us and .tw).

The new proposals include .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .post, .travel, and .xxx (I would love to register "www.cat.cat" or "www.meow.cat).

A couple years back, ICANN approved .biz and .info, and were considering .name for personal sites. I was wondering why they did not approved .xxx at that time, but it did not even make it into the final consideration.

It would be great if ICANN would actually enforce the proper use of top-level domains... For example, it would be great if all porn sites in the US had to register a .xxx domain and use that as their main site. It would be great if only non-profits could register .org domains.

The only true enforcement of registration types are .gov and .mil, because nobody is dumb enough to actually try registering a government or military domain without proper authority.

Frankly, I do not see how the influx of new top-level domain spaces will make a real difference. Are we really going to force people to switch their location on the Internet? Not likely. If ICANN were to enforce all new registrations to adopt only the appropriate top-level domain, then maybe there is a future for soem of these names. Otherwise, I doubt .xxx or .post will get any more usage than the previously approved .biz or .info domain spaces.

ICANN is a non-profit organization responsible for IP address space allocation and domain name system management, among other things.

Cylinder Locks and the Kitchen Sink

I finally added the nine inch cabinate that we custom ordered. I had to cut out the tile (that turned out to be surprisingly easy), which led to the purchase of our new vacuum, and ultimately got us ready for the counter tops.

We went to Home Depot right away and started the process over Memorial Day Weekend. Well, we are getting measured for the countertops tomorrow! It is amazing that I am excited about pressed wood with Formica, but I truly am! For one thing, we bought a kitchen sink this weekend. For a guy who's been crouching in the tub and doing dishes for many moons, the idea of a kitchen sink is truly exciting!

I have also fixed my first deadbolt this weekend. Our security door deadbolt was stuck and would not turn. I figured, "what do I have to lose?", and I started taking the screws out and messing with it. Frankly, the experience left me feeling far less secure about doors and locks. Then again, as Cathy pointed out, locks only keep honest people honest.

It turns out that the common lock is really quite simple in design; most houses tend to be equiped with pin-and-tumbler cylinder locks. I was able to figure out what was wrong with our deadbolt, and in the process discovered how I can rekey my own locks; in principle, I think I understand how to pick a lock now, too. I am now considering installing a master key system in our triplex; that would be really convenient.

I thought about describing my discoveries (which are basic, daily excercises for actual locksmiths), but I think a link to How Lock Picking Works would be much better.