Actually, Emerson had it slightly wrong; this weekend, things were all over the place. We spent most of the weekend partially clearing the living room, office, and our bedroom in preparation for the arrival of the drywall people tomorrow. We decided not to move much of the furniture in the hope that they can put plastic over it (besides, we have nowhere to put our bed or the couches in the living room), but we still had plenty of stuff to move, donate to Goodwill, or discard. Diane did most of the heavy lifting in the bedroom and living room, while I concentrated on the office — I spent half of Saturday afternoon getting the last two months’ worth of financial records into Quicken so I could file the pile of papers which was already threatening to topple over at any moment.

In between the cleanup, there were other events — one of Jeffrey’s friends had his 10th birthday party Saturday afternoon, and one of our friends from our Havurah had his 50th birthday party Saturday night. Jeffrey had three different kinds of chocolate cake on Saturday (two birthday cakes and one which was “just dessert”), so he was happy.

More later….

It’s later

Our laser printer seems to have bitten the dust. It’s a Lexmark Optra R, and it refuses to feed paper automatically — I get an error 100% of the time. Most of the time, I get a “25 Incorrect Manual Feed” or a “28 Load Paper”, but once in a while, I can get far enough to get an actual “20 Paper Jam” or “22 Paper Jam”. In no case do I get printed paper out of the machine, unless I switch to manual feed, in which case it prints fine all the time.

This is the third strike against this printer; we had a similar feed problem a couple of years ago (right after the printer went out of warranty), which we had fixed for $400 by the nice Lexmark folks. Then last year, the fuser went out; by that time, Lexmark wanted $500 to fix it, but we found a local shop that did the repair for $200. I don’t think I’m interested in trying to get it fixed again (not when a new printer would probably cost less than getting this one serviced), but I just hate the idea of putting an almost-functional printer into the landfill (now that I think of it, that’s why I repaired it last year). *sigh*

[Update: A new paper tray fixed the problem.]

BlueLogs should go live tomorrow

With any luck, I’ll do a “soft launch” of the IBM intranet BlueLogs server tomorrow. For some reason, the “most read sites” and “most read sites yesterday” pages don’t seem to be being built (it probably has something to do with my attempts to remove test sites from my tables). If I can fix those problems, I can go live; if not, I’ll remove the report pages and go live anyway.

I guess I need to trace through mainResponder.background.everyNight and see what I messed up in removing dead sites from my tables. If there was an easy way to save what I’ve done on my main site and the two user sites that have been created and otherwise do a complete reinstall, I would; I have a feeling I’ve left some other dingleberries behind that’ll get me later.

It was also the last activity of the night yesterday; I noticed that Diane’s car’s right rear tire was quite flat while I was dealing with getting the garbage ready for pickup. So I dug out the spare and the jack and changed the tire; this morning, instead of going to the office to set up the BlueLogs server, I went to the tire dealer, who immediately found the problem — a nail had been driven right into the tread. He said they could fix it; rather than wait at the dealer, I walked over to a nearby coffeehouse (not one with folk music, unfortunately, but at least one which serves coffee in real cups), carrying my trusty computer and cellphone.

When I got settled in at the coffeehouse, I realized that I should have given the tire people my number so I wouldn’t have to leave until the car was ready. This particular dealer is part of a chain, and they have an interesting system: you dial 1-800-33WORKS and your call is automatically routed to the store nearest you. So that’s what I did, and the person at the other end promised to let me know when the car was done.

Time passed. In fact, enough time passed that the car was supposed to have been finished. But my phone didn’t ring. And I decided I’d had enough coffee (besides, the lunch crowd was arriving and the place was getting noisy), so I called the tire store again. And they didn’t know what I was talking about. So I asked the question I should have asked in the first place: “Which store am I talking to?” And I discovered that I wasn’t talking to the store near me, I was talking to the store near the switching center which handles my cellphone. And they didn’t have my car. But they did have the phone number of the store which did, and sure enough, my car had been ready for a while, as promised.

Technology is wonderful, but sometimes it helps to know what’s going on behind the scenes.

Wine of the Day

I couldn’t find the 1998 Taltarni Sauvignon Blanc that I’d had at The Blue Room on Tuesday, but I did pick up a bottle of the 1999 ($10.99 at Beverages and More), and we had it with dinner tonight. I didn’t think it was quite as fruity as the 1998, but it was still very pleasant and is likely to take up a regular spot in the rotation.

Now, it’s off to Shir Hadash to help set up the Oneg Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom!