August 2006 Archives

Let Fall 2006 Begin

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It is hot and muggy out today, but Fall (as in Fall Semester) is starting tomorrow. I am ready to rock with the following courses on tap:
HIS480	Computer Use in History
GEO502	Topical Seminar - GIS
GEO505	Planning and Design
I am also trying to add one more, Public Speaking, one of those wonderful you need this to graduate classes. It is also one of those that is oversubscribed since they never provide enough instructors for the glut. Hopefully, I can get in one of the sections I want. Time to get the notebooks in order!

It is, Dammit!

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Ever since I can remember (and that is a long time ago!), Mickey Mouse's favorite dog has also been the name of the smallest planet in our Solar System. So, no matter what the International Astronomical Union says, it will always be a planet in my mind! So, join the cause and get a bumper sticker to let the world know what you think about it! Honk! All the proceeds from sales go to the Planetary Society. Thanks to Chris for keeping the fight alive!

Need for Speed Fulfilled

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We just got a notice from Comcast that the bandwidth on our cable modem line has been vastly improved. I, for one, have always been pleased with the speed, but, if it just takes recycling the modem to get more, what the heck. So I did and with the normal other workload that our LAN gets beaten with (downloading weather data, watching TV via the TiVo/Slingbox combo, scanner feeds, etc.), I ran this bandwidth test on Speakeasy and I got a score of... Damn! It is worth the extra bucks over the competition as far as I am concerned.

The Sweet Smell of Freedom

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Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
The words of Dr. King reflect my spirit today! For those of you who know me personally, you know why; for those who don't, let's just say I am very very happy today.

Computer Woes

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Well, the machine I had running my live scanner radio stream, home automation, and local file serving bit the dust this afternoon after a set of Windows updates. I hate the ever-growing computer graveyard in the garage. I think it is time to combine parts from all of them and see what I can build out of the rubble. I need to do it in a hurry since the fall semester starts in just two weeks and I have a ton of other projects that I need to get done post haste. Time to stop typing and start working! Update - the stream is back online on a backup machine, scanning only Chester County services. A permanent fix with the full channel set should be up by the weekend.

Look At All The Options

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Yes, I usually do just that, but then again, I do, on occasion, miss one. I have been working on some maps using ArcGIS 9 for the design and layout and producing them as PDF files for easy transport. It is super since ArcGIS has a built-in facility to export to PDF without having to have the full blown Adobe Acrobat product (not in my budget at the moment). A funny thing was happening - the maps and their PDF exports looked fine on my laptop, but when I emailed them off to Mary to print at her office, the map had a perfectly formed 2 - yes, the number 2 in the upper right hand corner of every single one. A real mystery. She even brought the prints home (not that I didn't trust her) and there it was on every single one. I thought I had tried everything, including deleting out elements on the map. The errant number was still on every one. I redesigned one of the maps - letter size to legal size to make some of the detail information more legible - and the number 2, while still there, had moved to the lower right corner, exactly where I had moved the compass rose to on the map. I hd never deleted the compass rose in tests since I wanted to have a valid cartographic product (thanks Dottie and Gary for pounding that one in my head). And then I remembered that ESRI, in their great wisdom had made the cartographic symbology into fonts, making map file sizes smaller to store. The only difference between my laptop at home and Mary's workstation in the office was the ESRI symbol fonts. The fix was simple, one that is actually in the export dialog (shown below). Simply click the box and the fonts are embedded in the resulting PDF file. It does make the file larger, but it is finally correct! mappdf.jpg

Network Pain In The NIC

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Networking in our household is not a fun exercise. Yes, it is because of poor planning on my part, but I just hate it when the machines go at the same time. Like last night - my Shoutcast Server all of a sudden started running 99% system load and would not die. So, I had to play games, move software around, and all of this at 12:30 am. It seems as though the problem wasn't the network at all, but the firewall. So, made a few minor changes and everything is back just fine. Now to get back to real work.