I took today off in leu of working saturday. I finished reading one of the harry potter books and started the next one. My achievement of the day was fixing the lock on the boot of my car. I have been putting it off till I had time to look at it put it back together then go to the dealer to pick up the parts I needed. Turned out that all I need to do was strip down the lock barrel degrease it rub off some corrosion on a couple pins then put it all back together. Once i worked out how to put it all back in the car I discovered that the car alarm would go off every time I opened the boot (thats trunk for you yanks). So after looking at it a bit more I worked out the microswitch in the lock wasn’t working, After pulling the lock out for about the 20th time I looked at the switch and saw that the wire had snapped. I didn’t think it was worth soldering so I made a trip to the dealer. $36 dollars later I have it installed and working. $36 dollars bought me a microswitch cost probably $0.10, a foot of wire $.20 and a connector $0.50. I have a feeling I could have replaced the microswitch if I had access to good electronic store, but this one had a couple holes in it for mounting onto the lock mechanism and I bet about $36 that they are not in the standard position. So now everything works as expected so mission accomplished. I can at least look on the bright side I didn’t pay for a dealer to make the repair, they would have just replaced all the parts for $100 plus at least another $50 for the labor.
Archive for November, 2004
Saturday, November 20th, 2004
I have been at work since 6am this morning, I left about 5;30pm I think. It was dark anyway when I went to work and dark when I came out.
I have been playing with an web frontend I wrote for snort while watching the end of PI and now I am watching Emma. Anyway It now daemonizes correctly which is very cool. I borrowed some code from spamd which it turns out is very similar to some examples on the web so I don’t feel any need to attribute it to spamd in the code. Eventually it will be published on http://sourceforge.net/projects/snortui/ there are just to many issues with it at the moment to release it to the public. It works very well but is a real bitch to set up.
Wednesday, November 17th, 2004
Looks like I have another dying hard disk. I will need to check and see how many harddisks I have replaced in the last year. If this is the master disk then it is the original one from the computer. If it is the slave then I have no idea where it came from.
Unusual System Events
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Nov 17 11:04:40 sunbox dada: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING:
/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@0,0 (dad0):
Nov 17 11:04:40 sunbox Uncorrectable data Error: Block 72e70
Nov 17 11:04:40 sunbox uata: [ID 606412 kern.warning] WARNING: timeout: reset bus
chno = 0 targ = 0
Nov 17 11:04:42 sunbox dada: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING:
/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@0,0 (dad0):
Nov 17 11:04:42 sunbox disk not responding to selection
Nov 17 11:04:42 sunbox dada: [ID 107833 kern.notice] dad0: disk okay
Wednesday, November 10th, 2004
Something sharing (more…)
Monday, November 1st, 2004
I need to pay attention next time I use an ATM. I was saying the other day that it shouldn’t be hard to remember that I always use english and I want a receipt. Guess what I noticed at the top of the last receipt I got from using a Bank of America ATM> “Save time. Set your ATM cash, language and receipt preferences now.” I am not sure how to do it but I will look next time.
Geek geek and more geek
Monday, November 1st, 2004I just finished reading an article about how they capture Monday night football in HD. Lots of tech talk in there but an interesting read.
I also discovered why my second ITX box wasn’t booting linux cleanly. I wrongly assumed that the hard disk would be configured as master out of the box, I guess it was cable select and plugged into the slave cable connector, just makes me want to go ARRRRGGG.
Loving the new TV that came on sunday. Mmmmm wide screen.
I went through about $20 worth of candy last night and need to hide the stuff that was left since I am sitting eating it all as I watch West wing.