Author archives: Mike

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Grr, it's the CPU cooler, stupid! (Case exhaust fan was doing just fine, thank-you.)


While out buying the new camera I purchased a case "exhaust fan", thinking that the whining I was hearing was the front intake fan's bearings going. Having replaced it, I thought to actually turn on the machine with the case open... the whining is coming from the fan mounted on the top of the CPU ...

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Bonus issue: Has the majority of the United States gone insane? (Warning, political rant...)


On another note, have been considering what the chap at the party last night was saying. He believes that the attack in New York on September 11th has fundamentally altered the American mind-set in such a way that for the next 30 years they will be unable to see any logic, and will unalterably elect ...

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Naps and plans (The weekend completes its disappearing act...)


Realised I was exhausted, so took a 6 or 7 hour nap somewhere in there. Now I'm considering getting an early start on the week.

Sometime soon now I should be getting the SIP-server project redesign spec, but Bryan wants me to see if I can get old-cmon running again. Sigh. I'm extremely tempted to ...

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Just scrape past her... (3 games to 2 and every one of them was close)


Grams was really on her game today, and honestly, I sucked. Came really close to losing every single game, took 4 or 5 shots to sink the black in all three games I won. At one point she had a 4 or 5 ball run. Took 111 pictures on the trip, almost all of them ...

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150 shots in around 9 hours (30 or 40 are usable)


Very pleasant evening tonight. Went to Sara's birthday party, which was populated by interesting, intelligent people who care about the world and the people in it. I wound up talking with quite a nice variety of people, from a bookseller and her (paper) game developer husband (he's given up hope that Americans can ever learn ...

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Since everyone's always wanted to know (The view out Mikey's window as he works...)


Have to be careful lest I create a photo-blog (no-one wants that!) For those in other areas, yes, this is what downtown Toronto (particularly the Forest Hill area) looks like in Winter.

Continuing to play with the camera. Very impressive for still-life shots (though I haven't much to use for subject-matter). Getting a better feel ...

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Toys are fun! (Finally get around to buying the camera...)


As regular readers (all four of you) will know, I've been intending to buy a new digital camera to replace the one for which I traded my scanner (sight-unseen) many months ago. So, today I finally made the time to go down to College Street and pick one up.

As intended, I bought the Powershot ...

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Hoarse and deaf, without a decent conversation to show for it (How to discourage intellectuals from hanging out in your establishment...)


Went to a friend's birthday party tonight. Was held at the Trane Studio (a bar of sorts). The music was good (live, for the most part), no complaints there. It's just that it was so loud that the only way to make oneself heard was to scream in one another's ears. It only took 30 ...

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Slow day for productivity... (Staring at a black box doesn't train it well)


Spent part of my day trying to tease out answers as to why Cinemon went berserk last night, acting as though the network was experiencing sporadic failures all over the joint. When I thought to post my musings, Bryan noted that, yes, there had been sporadic failures all over the network.

Which got me thinking; ...

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Rebuilding computers takes way too long (2 day's off-hours sopped up...)


Wound up rebuilding a friend's machine on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, it was a very slow machine, so it took far longer than I was hoping. She was asleep by the time I was ready to start configuring the email client, so I just left it for her. Oops. I use a hardware firewall (and Mozilla), ...

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