Driver of 1993 Ford Ranger slams into rear of Andy’s truck, parked on the street. Driver tested .209 BAC & admitted to text-ing while driving: Georgia text-ing while driving prohibition went into effect 12:01 July 1st – initial reports indicate this is the first citation ever issued under that law.

Definition of small world: When your neighbor can tell you about the night the driver of the ’93 Ranger had… “That guy is the bassist for a band I know – they were on at the Clermont the night before.. somebody was at the bar buying the band so many shots that evening, they couldn’t even go on for their set!”

Pictures:

[View with PicLens]

-”The screen’s bad”
-”Oh, how old is it?”
-”About ten years, maybe newer.”
-”Oh, then not really, no… but I may have a use for it.”
-”OK”

(That was summarized.)

I’d seen a number of write-ups of people turning old laptops into digital photo frames, and I figured this would make a good candidate. (After I replaced the backlight bulb – first ever for me; it was interesting.)

No real details on the build. Basically:

-Make sure you have a working laptop that will join a wireless network and you can remote to (LogMeIn, etc..)
- Rip the screen out of a laptop, mount it to a matte and in a shadow box. (I literally just hot glued the screen to the matte, and fit the matte into the clamps behind the glass (I kept the glass in place for protection.)
-Remove all the extra stuff from the body of the laptop to reduce weight, size, etc.
-Add any components you want to the laptop (I added a PCMCIA wireless card – yes it’s that old, and the receiver to a wireless keyboard and mouse I have.)
-Extend the power button off the motherboard or bezel and mount a button to the box to turn it on and off.
-Mount body of laptop in shadow box (I used mounting tape and secured it to the back panel.)

Enjoy – there’s lots of things you can do with it. I plan on using it as a photo frame with my photos and a box in the kitchen to view recipes off of – options are endless, and I’m not going to go into them here…

Photos:

Screen, mounted on matte

Front side

Finished Unit

Today I helped Kathy re-do her site. She bought a domain name a year ago, and used godaddy to host the site, and a few editors (dreamweaver, etc) to build it. I let her do all this because at the time I wasn’t comfortable with configuring and using, much lest self hosting content management systems.

I was using blogger at the time, and eventually researched Drupal and then WordPress. I migrated my blog to wordpress and came to the conclusion that it would be a good candidate for a CMS, even for a more ‘static style’ professional self promotion page.

It’s a testament to WordPress that Kathy was able to come over at 2 on a Sunday afternoon and by 6 we had a fully functional, CMS driven, very good looking web site: katherineshores.com

Also in the kit was a great filler wand with a push-pin valve on the bottom, so that you press against the bottom of the jar – filling it from the bottom, creating no foam.

Andy & the filler wand

(BTW, over the course of the last week, Andy has gotten more involved in the initiative – even though he honorarily named the vintage ‘Shenanigans’… seems every time he comes home on a weekend I’ve concocted some new thing to entertain myself with.)

First bottle being filled

So, one by one they got filled…

Capper

And one by one they got capped.. Until all 49 were done…

Filled bottles

So, in one week they should be good to go… aging for another four weeks after that…

Cleaning and boxing

Next is chardonnay!!

and this:

(Don’t move to AMLI, North Briarcliff)

and Axel’s latest hobby of tearing up the floormat/back of the passenger seat in my Civic, it was time for this:

And this:

Yes, I bought a car (a Honda CRV) based upon the requirement that my dog’s (second) crate would fit into it. Axel gets to go everywhere with us, just cause we love him so… and despite more toys in my back seat than at home, he still chose to destroy my car (he had started working on a seat belt as well).

Regardless of the crate requirement, I love it – I’ve always wanted an SUV, and it fits my life right now. I wish we had had it on our trip to Ohio, but it will work perfectly for next time. It’s also nice to have a larger vehicle when Andy and I are out gallivanting on the weekends – who knows when we’ll find that perfect chair, huh Kathy?

That’s just another cool feature of WordPress… you’re able to import your content from a different platform with a few clicks! (comments and all)

Also, the theme control and plugin options make it well worth while. (more on that later)

One issue I’m annoyed with is migrating out of blogger… given the permalink structure at blogger and the inability to edit any real code on blogger, migrating out of a non-custom domain blogger blog can be a little difficult when it comes to permalink redirect.

Given the (low) age of my blog and finite following (not to mention the surprising re-indexing speed of Google), I’m already not worrying about it. (site:viiiwonder.blogspot.com is already returning nothing on Google).

Back to those plugins: One I’m particularly excited about is called WP to Twitter, which automatically posts notifications of new blog posts to twitter on my behalf. In addition to that, there’s also Google Analytics for WordPress to provide better analytics, without having to add code to each page. There’s a host of other plugins that can make your site do just about anything you want!

Anyways… it’s going well, and stay tuned for more tech, family updates, and kitchen antics (trying to do my own sourdough…)

The Microsoft Knowledge base describes the difference thusly:

When you choose to run a regular format on a volume, files are removed from the volume that you are formatting and the hard disk is scanned for bad sectors. The scan for bad sectors is responsible for the majority of the time that it takes to format a volume.

If you choose the Quick format option, format removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard disk is not damaged.

Bad sectors contribute to a number of problems having to do with the operation of a computer, and can be the cause of many a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). So, if you’re re-formatting after one of these problems, take the time to do the regular format – it will help in the long run.

Long and short of it is that you can see new posts from me at: http://www.leviticus.me

If you’re curious about why I’m switching, it’s simple: I can’t stand blogger’s editor. I know most of you probably concur with me in that it isn’t the most user friendly. A couple good examples (including one I just encountered) are:

The first hint that he was more than just a hound mix was seeing this ad on TV:

What are the chances of another dog looking this similar to Axel?

"I was napping, can I help you?"

Several times now, we’ve had a neighbor comment on how similar he looked to a Bernese Mountain Dog,

A Bernese Mountain Dog

and yesterday at the park again someone commented on his likeness to a Bernese Mountain Dog. So we came home and Google’d it… Only to find out that the Bernese Mountain Dog has a much thicker/longer coat than Axel has, but his color was spot on.

Luckily on the Wikipedia page, there was a link to the ‘parent’ breed group of Swiss Sennenhunds or Swiss Mountain Dogs, and therein a link to the four sub-breeds.

From what we can tell, Axel is a nearly full bred Entlebucher Mountain Dog. He fits the colorings of the breed specification with the exception of his white mane and French kiss (white spot on the back of the neck), and his temperament is spot on as well.

An Entlebucher Mountain Dog (Not Axel)

Just thought I’d mention how cool the whole thing is… it’s actually a pretty rare breed, and how he ended up at the Atlanta Humane Society is beyond us – most people who have this dog are fanatics for them. As one article put it – ‘the Entlebucher is a highly sought after breed for families seeking a unique, loyal, family dog.’

Overall, we’re just happy he found us.