Allan

EDDT and Earthships

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I have yet to attend Environmental Systems class.  I’ve had two days of classes at the college in the EDDT course so far, with Process Design II, the designing of pressure vessels and their connections; Applied Research, the second class in a series including statistics that builds toward a final presentation to peers and instructors; Architectural Design III, actually the fourth in a series of residential and commercial architecture training; and Civil Design and Drafting, a continuation of topographic, mapping, drainage, landscaping, and all things considered in developing land for habitation, industry, or business.  It’s the weekend now, and I’m looking forward to next week to see what the environmental class has to offer.

I woke up this morning to an Earthship blog from New Zealand as a result of somewhat randomly clicking links online.  YouTube – Healthy Homes – Te Timatanga Earthship New Zealand  Also, Earthship NZ  I also saw an Earthship created here in Southern Alberta.  Alberta’s First Earthship  If I am to go in any direction that I choose, this would be it – sustainable building.

One of my instructors hit on something I lack – confidence.  He wrote on the board a list of characteristics a cook and a chef might have.  I spouted off the first characteristic – creativity vs. following.  It seems odd that I would be the first to offer an entry to his list, which in fact takes leadership, because I seriously lack the confidence needed in planning, creating, building, etc.  (I offered another, which he moved to the top of the list – communication.  I do have that, being an English teacher.)

So this is a personal skill I must work on during this last term in school – confidence in leadership.

now serving

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The server is now … serving again.  It crashed a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been trying to find a way to bring it back.

Disk failure.  An ongoing issue, I guess.  My HDDs are kind of old.
For a while, Windows could boot.  So I tried to clone it before it was too late.  It couldn’t clone because of disk errors.
I tried ‘chkdsk’ (part of Windows).  It fixed many errors.  After many reboots, many ‘chkdsk’s, and many cloning attempts, it eventually just wouldn’t boot.
I tried booting a cloned disk.  No go.  The clone didn’t take because it couldn’t complete the cloning process … because of disk errors.
I tried reinstating an image.  The image was no where to be found.
I eventually created a new Windows install on another disk and used it to read the old one so as to fix disk errors.  The new system could read the old disk.
Then, the new disk began making noise.  Drat.
So, another new install, this time on a RAID-1 disk array.  But then I couldn’t read my 3TB drive.  It only read 768GB.
At Caleb’s recommendation, I used Ubuntu Desktop to see if it could read the 3TB.  It couldn’t.  Old RAID system, I guess.
I tried to get the 3TB going in Windows again.  In this process, I lost my secondary backups on the 3TB drive.  Drat again.
New Windows install – Basic MBR disk again.  There’s the 3TB!  But no data.
Research – to find a way to copy my old MySQL database, inetpub webs, and everything else I need to resurrect the old webs.
It’s been a long time coming, but most webs are back up and running again.  Father’s web, lesjohnston.ca, is not yet working.  <sigh>  But I’ll stop here.

Headache from black mould in my house again.  I will leave the server be for now.

vodka, in English

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My view:
Silent Sam: 5/10
Absolute: 6/10
Smirnoff: 9/10
So I thought I’d do some research.

I just readed an artical on vodka.  I reconize alot of the brans onit.  Ones better then the other according to the righter.

Top 10 Vodkas In The World

Then it occurred to me that one shouldn’t trust a writer who writes so poorly.  Perhaps after they quit drinking, go back to school, figure out how to use the spell-check on their computer, or hire a proofreader, maybe I’d complete reading their article.

Seriously – alot?  I need a drink.

performance issues

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This entry is about my little Fujitsu Lifebook P7120.  It sits on my wooden IKEA storage shelf above my printers and surround-sound and plays study jazz on YouTube while I study at my desk.  It’s ten years old now.

It’s really too slow for anything else but play music in this age of apps running through the web.  I bought it used way back when and have had it ever since.

It’s gone through some transplants – new main board (a.k.a. motherboard) and power switch.  Also, an upgrade in memory (a whopping 1.5 GB), a solid-state drive, and a new battery.

I did the Windows Experience Index as a test.  Here are the results.

 

The Stranger In the Woods, or ode to Glenn

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I just finished a book that was given to me by the staff at Flexibility called The Stranger In the Woods by Michael Finkel.  What’s weird is that it took until the third-last chapter to draw a comparison between the character in the book, Chris, and my brother, Glenn.

They both escaped society and all its absurdities, couldn’t co-exist with people around, somehow found meaning in solitude, excluded the trappings of modern life from his own.

“He’s done some research; hypothermia, he believes, is a painless way to die.  “It’s the only thing that will make me free.”  (Page 182)  Glenn organized his things immediately around him in such as way that showed he knew exactly what he was doing – planned completely.

“Yeah, the brilliant man,” says Knight, “the brilliant man went to find contentment, and he did.  The brilliant man wishes he weren’t so stupid to do illegal things to find contentment.”  (Page 183)  My brother grew & sold pot as part of his income.  And, yes, he was brilliant, and he was trying to find contentment somehow.

I could go on, but I won’t.  The book is done.  Perhaps this is why Elma chose this book.  Thank you, Elma.  I get it.

tablet ease-of-use test – Surface 4 Pro & reMarkable

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I’ve got my two tablets – the Microsoft Surface 4 Pro and the reMarkable.
Even the names begin to give away their characteristics.
It all began with a sore shoulder.  Those of you who read this know why the shoulder is sore, and several kilos of books and binders in my backpack made the shoulder ache big-time.  A tablet would allow me to carry ebooks and store my notes in electronic form rather than paper.
So I bought the Surface.  Really nice to use – except writing on it was glitchy, more so sequentially after each update from Microsoft Update.  Slick, fast, lightweight, powerful.  But glitchy sometimes.
After a year or so, I found an ad for reMarkable, a tablet that uses e-ink.  It’s a cross between an e-reader and a limited version of a tablet.  It does have limits, but I can stare at it for hours without my eyes popping out of my head.  The surface of it, as suggested in their ads, actually does feel for the most part like I’m writing on paper.
Keep in mind that I’d tested these in the classroom, coffee shop, home, inside, outside, in the dark, in sunlight, under pressure, at my leisure – in every imaginable scenario.
I recently loaded up AutoCAD, Revit, AutoCAD Civil 3D, and Inventor on the Surface.  They work well, but the Surface is somewhat under-powered for this.  Pretty good though.  An acceptable second to the HP ZBook 15 that the school provides.  I also put ebooks on the reMarkable and used it as a textbook e-reader.  It’s a little slow to flip from page to page, but it’s not slow when it comes to writing.
So I created a couple of videos.

12/14/2017  6:30 PM    167495387 tablet ease-of-use test Microsoft Surface 4 Pro 20171214_182812.mp4
12/14/2017  6:26 PM    103571641 tablet ease-of-use test reMarkable 20171214_182504.mp4

Have a look and see a comparison.  I cast no judgment on each one since they’re clearly different machines.  I thought I’d sell one of them once I decided.  But I see now that they’re both designed for very different tasks.  I guess I’m keeping them both.

last day of classes, mice, magazines, & banjos

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As the title of this journal entry states, today is the last day of classes for this term.  I did my final exams for STS-2260 Statistics / Applied Research I and EDD-2268 Architectural Design II.  The goofy thing is that I think I did much better in my weaker subject, Stats, than I did in the one that gets my blood going, Architecture.  But we shall see.  My other two classes – ENF-2250 Fluid Mechanics and EDD-2255 Process Design I.

I got a subscription at the suggestion of my Architecture prof – Fine Homebuilding.  I haven’t gotten my first issue yet, but they did offer a free two-week online subscription.  Nice, except that I can’t print, can’t store it for later, and can’t get past page 32 of the issue.  I also asked my prof about a magazine I read ages ago called Architectural Digest.  His idea is that it isn’t what it used to be but is still an interesting read about various architecture of well-to-do folk around the world.  But I’m more interested in ideas and such that will help me in the ordinary-folk architectural world.

I’m finding it hard to play the banjo and use a normal (i.e. cheap) mouse.  Why?  Ages ago, on my 16th birthday, I guy hit me and Ron Ripley while we were crossing the street on our bicycles.  His leg was broken and fingertip torn off, and my hand was broken.  To this day, my right ring finger bends somewhat toward my middle finger when curled.  I got a new mouse – the CAD Mouse from 3D Connexion – and even put racing stripes on it, allowing me to speed up my Revit, CAD, & Inventor use.  If only putting racing stripes on my banjo would help me play faster and better.

Sundry things:

Tomorrow I’m getting an oil change for my little Kia, pulling the forms off our experimental concrete blocks, and giving blood.

update

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I wrote to Phil Harder in MB in the summer.  I sent him a card with a “thank you” for helping Uncle Al so much and an apology that I couldn’t make it out that (last) summer.  It came back – twice! – with the wrong address.  As it turns out, Mom had his address in her ‘little black book’ all along.  He probably thought I’d forgotten about him.  Not the case.

Only two weeks of classes left.  I did an exam today in Process Design and got the mark back in record time.  75%.  Not bad.  Not as good as I was hoping.  I’m not so great with Statistics & Applied Research.  I’m watching YouTube videos like this one to bone up.  Pretty simplistic, I know, but I tend not to do well if the instructor teaches rapid-fire. That’s just me.  The Applied Research part of it is not bad.  The other two classes, Fluid Mechanics and Architectural Design II, are not bad.

I slipped on the ice on my way to classes a couple of weeks ago and bruised my hip.  For a good week (actually not a very good week) I’d been limping, but now it seems to be getting better.  It’s the same old injury in my hip that will likely never go away.  I’m working on improving it.  I saw the doc about it.  He didn’t seem to think it was much – just bruised muscles.  My treatment?  Aspirin.  Yup – just plain aspirin.  I slipped just a week before that, too, as I was shovelling snow off the apron leading from the street to the garage.  I just sat there on the ground for a few seconds to take stock.  No, no problem.  After I stopped tensing, all was fine.

Aizlynn, on the other hand, did not fare as well.  She slipped once a couple of weeks ago while she and Caleb were here and then again with much more serious results while visiting Caleb’s folks in BC.  She slipped on the steps of Caleb’s parents’ house and went down several steps on her butt.  Apparently she’s quite bruised.  While here, she used my ice cleats since she has no Canadian-style winter footwear.  This is why I wasn’t wearing them and went down.

The weather has been warm the past few days, but it comes at a cost – wind.  I had a headache today and took 2 1/2 Tylenol-3s during class.  It more-or-less got rid of my headache.  It’s still buzzing away in the background.  I would have stayed at school a bit longer except that a) I had a headache, b) my study-buddies (Tyson, Randy, Christopher, Chrystal, & others) either left or were on their way out, and c) my tutoring student scheduled for 8:30PM cancelled.  So … I’m at home, studying Stats.

There’s a Facebook page related to the college called LC Confessions.  I looked a few times but could find nothing that pertains to me except for two posts – one on how crappy instant noodles are and one on if someone were to disappear off of Facebook, would they be missed.

Mom is feeling pretty weak these days.  There are times when she’s on top of her game and others when she’s a rag doll in a chair.  She tends to try to do too much.  I just overheard her talking with Floyd, exhuming two examples from memory of being really tired – one of when she was made to walk along next to the horse-pulled wagon when she was a kid and one where Father made her work out in the rain.  Floyd came up with the idea that no one was making her do stuff she didn’t want to do now.  It’s all up to her.

Suppertime.  Catch you later.