Change comes from within your pockets
August 27, 2007
Everyone has their change bowl(s), right?
I decided to empty mine out unto the bike shop. 20 lbs of change translated into $188.28, and a number of fewer banks trips for the shop.
.25 x 438 = $109.50
.10 x 466 = $46.60
.05 x 372 = $18.60
.01 x 1330 = $13.33
2606 coins = $188.28
Ah, downsizing.
Left-Handed OSX Method
August 22, 2007
On Saturday, I learned through the bike shop that my friend Gene’s wife, Marcy, had suffered a serious stroke. The next day, a Slashdot article on communicating with hospitalized people was put on their main page, and I sent it to Tim who had been visiting Marcy and their family.
Through the subsequent comments/links to external sites, Tim picked out some comments about Hospitals keeping Magna Doodles to communicate with patients that cannot speak. He picked one up on his way over, and gave it to Marcy, who proceeded to write her name on it. Tim asked if she would like to use his now-retired PowerBook, and she said yes.
I spent a chunk of my afternoon today, looking into modifying the keyboard map so that it could be used with one hand (the left, in this case) in OSX. Not a whole bunch came up.
Finally, I ran across an app named Ukelele, a nice, graphical Mac OS X keyboard layout editor that somehow seemed to evade my venerable Google-Fu.
Anyways, I created a layout named Marcy ( download keylayout here ). Here are the installation/usage instructions, and a diagram of the keymappings. I decided to use Caps Lock as the key switcher. Could have used Shift, but this just seemed easier.
Save Marcy.keylayout to /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ or Library/Keyboard Layouts/ in your home directory if you don’t have write access to /Library.
Logout and log back in.
Go to International in the System Prefs, and enable Marcy. This will automatically show the input (flag) menu in the menu bar – to switch to Marcy, just click on the American Flag (or whatever your default it), and select Marcy. That’s it.
Bash.org on Named Storms
August 20, 2007
Quote #796356:
[mfts] Who the fuck is the one naming hurricanes?
[mfts] They somehow manage to give them the least threatening names ever.
[mfts] If I turned on the news and heard that Hurricane Erin was coming I’d think to myself, “Erin? I could take that slut.”
[mfts] If I turned on the news and heard that Hurricane Dicksmasher was approaching, I’d grab all the money in the house, shove it in my pockets, and get the fuck out of there.
A valid point, methinks.
Weighing in at 3.57 lbs, in blue – HITOMI!
August 17, 2007
Yesterday, amidst mountains of work asplodiness, I had a shining moment; my Seven Verve was delivered to the shop.
Quoth the Stimpy: “Oh, Joy!”
According to BabyNames.com, Hitomi is Japanese for “blue eyes”, while BehindTheName.com says it is Japanese for “pupil of the eye”. It can also come from (hito) “wisdom, intellect” and (mi) “beautiful”.
This should be about Alaska but…
August 10, 2007
I haven’t gotten around to that. So in lieu, three things:
Congrats to Mikey, whose team will compete in the DARPA Grand Challenge with two new friends/hashers of mine, Just Matt and and Just Aaron. Go Team Gray!
Tomorrow is the Red Dress Run.
Secondly, tonight is the first Saints home game of the season! Who Dat!, Bitches!
