Everything I used to bore people on newsgroups and mailing lists with, now in one inconvenient place.
I’d like to make a suggestion for Apple: If you’re going to sell an HP Printer/Scanner/Copier PSC 1510, you should make sure that HP bundles drivers THAT WERE WRITTEN IN THIS FUCKING CENTURY! No shit – I hit the “Scan” button, and it launched “Classic”, the backwards compatibility program that allows it to run programs written for the old OS 9. It then fired up some limited edition of an ancient version of Photoshop.
Come on, you guys.
As reported in Rants and Revelations : The Computer Doctor is IN, I did some major disk swappery when Stevie’s iBook died a few months ago. I put Stevie’s hard drive in Vicki’s iBook, and Vicki’s hard drive in a 15″ Powerbook Titanium that she borrowed from work. Well, Stevie graduated, and as a graduation present she was given a MacBook. So it’s time to reverse the surgery, putting Vicki’s hard drive back in her iBook, and the original hard drive back in the Powerbook.
Time to haul out the Torx and Phillips screw drivers, and most importantly the Fixit Guilde.
Putting the hard drive back in the Powerbook is pretty straight forward, except taking the ide cable off the hard drive is a little brute force for my liking. Only 9 screws, all the same head and general size. And after a little coaxing and swearing, it went back together and booted.
Putting the hard drive back in the iBook is a real pain in the ass. Lots of fiddly crap, including a bit where it says
Breathe deeply. Trying times are ahead, but we promise the lower case does come off.
and another bit where after about 30-45 minutes of work, you get to the bit where it says
Remove the following 16 screws:
But at least they put handy little loops on the ide cables so that they could be removed without bending any pins.
This is about that stage. (As you can see, I’m a firm believer that a clean organized desk is obviously a pre-requisite for doing good work.)
Actually, it was a lot easier having done this a few times now. But I still held my breath as I booted it up and make sure the fiddliest bits, the trackpad and speaker cables got hooked up correctly and it boots properly. And it did! Yay for me!
While dis-assembling and assembling this iBook, several of the Torx screws were getting very rounded off – I had a hell of a time removing one or two of them. I have my doubts that I’ll be able to get the screws off again. I guess next time it breaks, Vicki will have to get a MacBook too.
After wrecking my Treo at Pinckneyville, I decided the replacement (that goodness I bought insurance on it) needed a bit more protection. I got the Innopocket Magnesium Case for Palm Treo.
The case appeared to be ideal, with strong clear plastic over the screen and strong magnesium everywhere else important. Even better, the case has a good double hinge so you can get the front out of the way to use the whole device. The reviews warned me about one drawback – there is a nubbin on the back to clip into the belt clip, and when you fold back the front the nubbin touches the clear screen protector. And sure enough, there is a bit of a wear mark there. But then again, better wear on a replaceable case than on the Treo itself.
The design of the case seems to have placed a premium on access to all the extraneous bits of the phone, like the SD card and the camera. That can be handy at times. But it has also lead to a couple of drawbacks:
The belt clip is an interesting design and works pretty well, except when the clip itself falls off my shorts.
Not a complaint about the case itself, but more a simple observation: a couple of times I’ve forgotten that the case was closed and attempted to “touch” on the touch screen. Doesn’t work through the screen protector.
In summary: I like the case, and can overlook the small flaws. I hope it will protect the Treo, especially since Cingular cancelled my insurance for having the temerity for making a claim against it.
Ivan Basso’s performance on this year’s Giro d’Italia leave no doubt in my mind who the real inheritor of Lance Armstrong’s mantle is. It looks like he’s going to try for the impossible – back to back wins in the Giro and le Tour, and if anybody can do it, he can. In a way it amazes me that a team from Denmark of all places can be so dominant in the mountains, but Basso had much better support in the mountains in the Giro than Armstrong had in last year’s Tour. Last year it seemed that whenever there was a mountain stage after a flat one, Discovery would get caught flat footed when the peleton broke up, leaving Armstrong alone without support. But Basso always seemed to have another rider or two until the crux of the stage.
It’s not as good as watching it on TV, but I’ve been following the race thanks to live.cyclingnews.com, and when away from the computer, using their WAP equivalent on my Treo. I think next year I’m going to spring for the money and get OLN’s webcast version. I didn’t do it last year because it was just the bare tv feed with no commentary, and because it required a Windows computer. This year they seem to have added commentary, and it works on Macintosh computers, but I didn’t go for it because I wasn’t sure if it was worth the money. But I’ve spent more for less, so next year I think I’m going to try it.
With my broken Treo, I felt like I was getting my weather briefing for the trip home with one arm tied behind my back. The briefer initially gave me a glowing report for the trip home, saying that there was a cold front, but it wasn’t anywhere near my route of flight. But then he started reading the NOTAMs for Rochester and told me that runway 16 was closed. Rochester doesn’t *have* a runway 16. Wait a second – “I did say Rochester NY, didn’t I?” Ok, time to start over. Suddenly the cold front was very significant. The weather now was similar to the trip out – VFR between Pinckneyville and Lima Allen County, but an airmet for turbulence below 6,000 feet for much of the route. It was going to be breezy for both landings. There was also going to be ice in the clouds from Cleveland on, and the freezing level was going to be lower than on Friday – as low as 3,000 feet between Buffalo and Rochester. Oh, and some convective activity around Buffalo.
I was pretty sure I could handle it, and finding a place to land en-route and waiting it out would always be an option. So I filed the first leg IFR from the BIB VOR on to AOH, figuring that it would be easier to pick up the clearance in the air than in a tiny uncontrolled field, especially without a cell phone.
As I lifted off from the runway, a voice came over the radio warning me about the presence of motorcycles and to conduct myself accordingly. And with that, I bid a fond farewell to PJY. It was a bit bumpy on the way up, but was smooth at altitude. It was a great clear day, and not much haze. I had a bit of trouble remembering how to pick up an IFR clearance in the air – I initially contacted Flight Service, but they put me straight and gave me a Kansas City Center frequency to call.
The only other excitement was due to my having gobbled down a couple of hard boiled egg just before I took off – suffice it to say I can’t apologize to Mark enough for the result of that. Once again we saw the airport from well away, and cancelled IFR, and entered the downwind. It was bumpy down low and pretty gusty winds, but I think I did one of my better landings of the weekend, if I do say so myself.
In the FBO, we borrowed the courtesy car, and went into town to grab a bite to eat. Mark put some gas in the car, so they waived the $10 rental fee. There was some sort of 4WD festival going on, and we saw a lot of people from that. We also checked the weather, and it looked pretty crappy. The winds were getting worse, the icing pilot reports were getting more numerous, and there were several areas of yellow and red on the radar around Buffalo. Once again, the plan was to try it, and be flexible.
As we’d been cut loose from Indiana Approach coming into AOH, we’d been told to contact them on the same frequency to pick up our next clearance, and so we did. In spite of the fact that I filed the same route (in reverse) that I’d had on the way down, which had netted me a re-route along the way, I got “cleared as filed”.
Somewhere between Indianapolis and Cleveland, the clouds started filling in below us, and I had to ask for higher to stay in the clear. I could see solid clouds below for as far as the eye could see, but more importantly I couldn’t see any clouds boiling up into the stratosphere. I was up to 9,000 feet or so over Cleveland, and they gave me a short vector to get me off Victor 14 over the airport, which you can see in the flight track.
Between Dunkirk and Buffalo, when they turned me over to Buffalo approach, the clouds were suddenly higher and I knew I’d soon be in them. I asked what they could see on the radar and they suggested that I go direct to Rochester which would put me between two areas of rain. I didn’t have anything on the Stormscope, so I wasn’t worried about thunderstorms any more. But not long after I was in the clouds and picking up ice. I asked for lower, and they soon sent me to 6,000, and then 4,000 as that *still* didn’t put me out of the clouds. A few times I got between layers and it looked like ice was coming off, but then the layers shifted and I was back in it. I asked for still lower, because I could see the bases not too far down. He said he couldn’t vector me down lower there, but he’d send me north to where the MVA (Minimum Vectoring Altitude) was 3,000 feet. On the vector, I got clear of the clouds and could see Batavia down below me. When he’d got me where he wanted and down to 3,000, I was definitely below the freezing level and the ice came off very fast. Which is good, because if that hadn’t worked I probably would have made a precautionary landing at Batavia, or cancelled IFR and scud run at 1,500 feet.
The Rochester controller didn’t seem to believe me that I was landing a small GA plane in this weather. He gave me numerous un-requested wind checks. It was varying between 30 and 40 knots, and I swear at least once it was gusting up to 48 knots, but fortunately it was only 10 or 20 degrees off of the nice long and wide Runway 28. I had to cinch up my seat belt to keep from hitting my head. It wasn’t a pretty landing, but with the strong winds I could keep a lot of power in, which helped. Taxiing back to the tie down I had to pause and think about how you are supposed to hold the controls while taxiing, because I rarely bother with such a heavy aircraft in normal light winds.
It was a challenging flight, a learning experience, and a great way to end a great weekend.
