Month: March 2006

Evening Rant

Man I hate doing taxes. Is it just me, or are US taxes even more complicated that Canadian taxes? Ok, some of that was because of Jean’s inheritance (and we haven’t got it all because her house didn’t sell until the 2006 tax year). I’ve spent almost my entire “day off” on this crap. And I can’t file because I don’t have the 1098 for the mortgage on the old house.

And what’s the deal with TurboTax charging $40 for the software, and then another $30 to e-file? I used to use TaxAct and it was something like $15 total. And the rebate for people who’ve bought TurboTax and Quicken recently doesn’t apply to me because I bought Quicken from the Quicken web site so I don’t have a UPC for it.

Morning Rant #2: Spam Frustrations

I have a Wiki that I set up to try to stimulate some discussion about some sort of replacement to the DAFIF data that is going away in October. So far, it’s been pretty much a bust – nobody has contributed anything in months, nobody has done any of the grunt work like figuring out a database schema or XML schema or even the user interface, and so I’m thinking of forgetting the whole idea. I don’t have the time to do all the work myself, and if nobody else is going to do any, it isn’t going to get done. But that’s not what this rant is about.

This morning, I get a notification from the Wiki software that somebody has edited nearly every single page in the whole damn Wiki. Needless to say, it was all spam. It took me nearly two hours of messing around in RCS to get rid of every instance of the spam. But even worse, is that it turns out that somebody had already inserted the same spam into the navigation bars of the wiki months ago, and I hadn’t noticed. So my Wiki is actually showing up quite high in Google searches for certain drugs. ARGGGH!

Also, a while ago I mentioned that this blog tends to get spam in brief spurts of a few dozen spams over the course of a weekend, and then nothing for weeks at a time. Well, that seems to have ended – I’m getting spam every day now. I knew it was too good to be true. Fortunately SpamKarma2 is doing a great job of finding it and quarantining it so I don’t have to continually check. And it’s pretty good about not having false positives either – comments that it thinks are borderline spam are given a chance to fill out a captcha and then that comment gets through, and subsequent comments from the same user are given a few positive points. So I’m actually relieved that the expected has happened, and it hasn’t inconvenienced me much.

Morning Rant #1: Work Frustrations

A couple of weeks ago, my work computer froze up hard while I was copying the source code tree to my thumb drive so I could do some work at home. (Yes, probably a gross violation of security rules, but it’s either that or do a lot less work.) Afterwards, I’ve had nothing but problems with ClearCase – I had to toss out a couple of the views I had, and make new ones, and even with those ones, about once every two days I’ll get some sort of I/O error and have to do a “ct recoverview -f -tag tomblin_DCOS6.0” to get it working again. There were other problems on that machine. Plus it’s running on a 2.4 Linux kernel and RedHat 8 and all our new stuff is being developed on 2.6 and CentOS 4.2.

I decided the time had come to reformat and reinstall CentOS. The install went relatively smoothly, except at one point in the sequence I saw a message about a problem on one of my hard disks flash by too fast for me to read. Of course now that I’ve got the OS installed, I have to find and install Clearcase, Java, Jikes, Eclipse, Crossover Office, Microsoft Office, and Notes. But first I want to test that drive. I told smartctl to start a long test on both drives. I got Clearcase, Java and Jikes installed (the others can wait) and tried to do some work. And found I couldn’t, because one of my cow-orkers, who loves to “refactor”, managed to refactor a couple of files out of existance, so I can’t do a top level build successfully.

While that was going on, I tried Firefox. The Firefox that CentOS installed was 1.07, rather than the 1.5 I had been using, and I got a strange thick gray bar at the bottom of the screen below the status bar. It’s about as thick as the navigation toolbar up top, with a tiny red caret on the left side, but nothing else. I can’t seem to get it to go away, even by switching themes.

Ok, next up was Thunderbird. It opened up, and for my normal mail account, it showed “Drafts”, “Sent” and “Trash”, but no “Inbox”. I checked in the directory, and there was definitely an Inbox there. I sent myself a test message, it sent, but still no Inbox. I tried “Create a new folder”, but it wouldn’t let me create an Inbox because one already existed. Ok, I said to myself, obviously Thunderbird is hosed. How about Evolution. I opened up Evolution, and set up an account. It showed a couple of folders, but no Inbox! So I said “to hell with this”, and exited Evolution. But when I tried to blow away my .evolution directory, I got a bunch of NFS errors and some of the files wouldn’t go away.

That’s when I chucked it all and went home. I figured somebody on Monday can help me, or get me new hardware.

GPS decisions

Because I’ve been working a bunch of overtime recently, I’ve got a bit of “free” money, and a pressing need to make myself feel better about all the free time I’ve given up. So I decided it was time to get an upgrade of my GPS – I’ve had my Garmin GPSMAP 195 since soon after I got my private pilot license in 1996. At the time, it was top of the line – I think I spent about $1400 for it.

At first, I was looking at the Garmin GPSMAP 196 – it’s similar to the 195 in that it has a monochrome screen, but it has a faster processor and a couple of high nifty value features, like being able to put the map and the HSI on the screen at the same time instead of switching between them like I do with the 195. Also, it will show an extended runway centerline, which is good for situational awareness if you’ve being vectored to an ILS – on the 195 if you select an ILS approach, it draws a line from your current position to the intermediate fix, and then from there to the runway, which is not optimal. Used 196s are going on eBay for anywhere between $510 and $760, and new ones are $800.

But then I counted up how much overtime I’ve earned, and figured that maybe I deserve a Garmin GPSMAP 296. The 296 is a colour version of the 196. When Garmin brought out the 295, the colour follow on to the 195, it sucked with a capital S. The 295 had a lousy screen and an almost non-existant battery life. The 296 is a different story entirely. The colour is so good that they provide a topographic view background map, and also a terrain warning function very much like the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System that the airliners have. (Not that I fly in the mountains, but it’s still a cool feature.) 296s cost about $1100-$1250 used on eBay or $1500 new.

And once you start looking at the 296, the obvious question is “Why not a Garmin GPSMAP 396?” The 396 is the upgrade to the 296 that came out last year – it has all the features of the 296, plus it hooks up to XM Satellite Radio to overlay all sorts of weather information on your moving map, from NEXRAD radar to satellite imagery and lightning strikes. Plus you can use it for listening to XM Radio. The problem is that this extra capability costs an extra $1000 – and don’t expect to get it on eBay at all. I couldn’t find a single legitimate eBay auction for these guys except for stores that had the Buy It Now price set to the MSRP. And don’t forget that the XM weather subscription is an extra $50 a month, plus another $13 if you want the radio as well.

Both the 296 and the 396 have an optional “auto kit” that allows you to use it for turn-by-turn directions while driving. I can see that being very useful, especially in courtesy cars in strange cities.

I agonized over the decision, 296 versus 396 for a couple of days. I lost a lot of sleep over it last night. Finally I came to a decision: I’m not the sort of guy who goes testing the fringes of thunderstorms or going on many long cross countries. In fact, other than going to Oshkosh and the rec.aviation fly-in in Pinckneyville, I just don’t do that many long trips.

So I reluctantly decided to get the 296. Then I found that Aircraft Spruce and Specialty is selling used 296s for $1095! I can use the savings to buy an auto kit! And maybe a new ANR headset. So that’s what I’ve done – I’ve ordered the used 296 and the auto kit. I still haven’t decided which new ANR headset to get.

By the way, anybody want to buy my 195? I can hardly call it “gently used”, but it’s in pretty good shape considering how I just toss it in the flight bag. Comes with yoke mount, at least one and possibly two external antennas (I recently re-found the one I thought I’d lost). Every now and then the zip-up carrying bag for the GPS shows up, so if you’re local I can pass that along to you next time it turns up. Same with the manual – I think it’s in the boxes in the library we haven’t unpacked from the move yet (but we’re getting the library painted in a few weeks, so those boxes will get unpacked very soon afterwards). They seem to be going for around $250-$300 on eBay (with a couple of outliers above and below). First local person offering $200 gets it.

How big an aviation geek are you?

I was rushing to the bathroom, when I got buttonholed by another aviation geek who works here. He wanted to ask me if I could do something for his group next week some time. I said “PAN PAN PAN” (aviation speak for an urgent but not life-threatening condition) but he just looked at me uncomprehendingly.

From this I learned two things:

  • in spite of his years in the Navy working on A-4s, and his current work as a volunteer at local airshows, he’s not up on the pilot/controller glossary
  • the Imodium isn’t working