Weekend To-Do List

• Organize/tidy kitchen
• Clean out e-mail
• Clean out Google Reader
• Try to get rid of printer
• Blog photos
• E-mail realtor
• Clean litter box
• Tidy office closet
• Sort cable box
• Date night with lovely wife
• Emerald Necklace hike/walk

The Lottery: You Have to Play

Seen in a Boston convenience store window. Apparently they are very serious about the lottery here in Massachusetts.

Segway Dealer

In Cambridge, there is a Segway dealer. In that Segway dealer, there is a dog.

("Segway of Boston" notwithstanding, it's in Kendall Square near where I work.)

New Englanders Like Their Stone

One of the things that I've noticed living in New England is that stone is a very popular building material. Even for basketball courts.

Weekend To-Do List

• Install DVD drive
• Shop for clothes
• Organize/tidy kitchen
• Clean out e-mail
• Clean out Google Reader
• Try to get rid of printer
• Dim sum with colleagues
• Watch boat race
• Organize bookmarks
• Blog photos
• Send out financial report for canyon trip
• E-mail realtor
• Figure out bike storage
• Shop for groceries
• Do laundry
• Put up bulletin board
• Put up towel rods
• Clean litter box

Not Art

This afternoon, I took the long way home & made some photographs.

Just so you know though, this is not art; viz:

More P

New Business Cards Say "Dr."

Intrigued by P

I am intrigued by this P.

Black and white or color?

As for background, this P (and its twin, not pictured) label a parking garage near Kendall Square that I pass on my way to work. It also has a bright red neon sign that reads "DANGER VEHICLE EXITING" or somesuch all the time, regardless of whether there is a car coming.

The Worst Error Message in the World, Part II

The other day I wanted to set up my new printer on my Debian box, which uses the CUPS printing system. Supposedly this is pretty easy. I downloaded a PPD file from Brother and used the CUPS web interface to add the printer. It saw the printer already so it was just a matter of going through a few wizard screens, right? Not so much:

Bad device-uri "socket://10.0.0.3"!

OK, so I googled around a bit, looked in the readme, and you can do this using the command-line interface too. The program "lpinfo" shows all the visible printers, including "socket://10.0.0.3" which matches the IP address of the printer. I then use "lpadmin" to add the printer. Easy, right? Not so much:

lpadmin: Bad device-uri "socket://10.0.0.3"!

CUPS has a log. Maybe it has useful information on what's going wrong? Not so much:

CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer client-error-not-possible: Bad device-uri "socket://10.0.0.3"!

Two hours of screwing around later, including verifying that I can ping the printer and even telnet to it on all the right ports, I give up and decide to try removing and reinstalling the package. There's too many dependencies for this, so I settle for reconfiguring it. And guess what? CUPS on Debian has a notion of "backend programs" that can be turned off. It is not mentioned in the README. And "socket" was turned off.

So if you have this problem, try:

dpkg-reconfigure cups

and ensure that your desired printing interfaces are active.

Filed as Debian bug #599660.

Diploma!

Arrived in the mail a few days ago.

I bought a frame for it today but managed to break the glass while putting in the diploma. Sigh. Anyone know where to get a sheet of 11x14 framing glass with minimal effort?

Weekend To-Do List

• Clean out e-mail
• Clean out Google Reader
• Date night with lovely wife
• Get rid of printer
• Pay bills
• Investigate new Firefox sync
• Send out financial report for canyon trip
• E-mail realtor
• Try to figure out bike storage
• Go to post office
• Go to Target
• Go to non-hippie grocery store
• Clean off table
• Put up shelf in bathroom
• Tidy up office
• Tidy up bedroom
• Organize books
• Choose health plan & enroll
• Blog diploma pic
• Blog crappy printer setup experience
• Ask shadow question on photo.SE
• Put up framed diploma and bulletin board

Organizing Tools

We moved from a 1,100-square-foot house in Minneapolis to a 1,100-square-foot condo in Cambridge. The problem is that the house also had a full basement and an attic.

In particular, we had tools and hardware filling a hall closet plus more scattered through the basement. Now they mostly fit on this shelf, which I just completed organizing at great effort. There are also six tool boxes in the closet and a few other knicknacks here and there, and we did put a fair bit in the Goodwill pile (e.g., we now have three plant timers instead of six). Erin was impressed, which always makes me happy.

This spider came by to check things out and admire my handiwork:

Apple Picking

Went apple picking today with friends Andrew & Emily and their son, in West Boylston.

Wife: Husband Is Clever

The other day Erin told me how cleverly I had hung up the camelbak hose on the microwave. I thought OK and went back to whatever I was doing.

Later, I went into the kitchen and found this:

... which I did not do. I had just hung it off the cupboard handle which is above the microwave.

(The hose has a magnet on the bite valve so you can more easily stick it to your chest strap. That's how it's stuck to the microwave.)

Weekend To-Do List

The return!

• Clean out e-mail
• Clean out Google Reader
• Write blog glue for Bibble
  
• Request books from library
• Cancel Qwest
• Organize tools & other junk in office
  
• Hang shelf in bathroom
• Hang pictures
• Date night with lovely wife
• Apple picking with Emily & Andrew
• Get rid of printer
• Pay bills
• Investigate new Firefox sync
• Submit to Daily WTF
• Send out financial report for canyon trip
• Fix e-mailing of blog posts
• Set up automatic tweeting of blog posts
• E-mail realtor
• Try to figure out bike storage