Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 76 of 147)

New Yorker Librarians answer your questions

Over on Emdashes, a new monthly column by the librarians for the New Yorker has begun.

You ask.

They answer.

You’ve been dying to know, admit it, where the last typewriters in the New Yorker offices are kept and why:

Q. When was the last typewriter spotted in the office?

Jon writes: Today. There are three typewriters in the library (two IBM Wheelwriters and a Brother ML 300). Though the majority of our work is done on computers—and has been for some time now—there are still a few archival resources we maintain with typewriters. We’re the only department in the office that still uses typewriters on a regular basis.

And “Q. Are cartoons fact-checked? What’s the sort of thing that checkers ask to be changed in a drawing or caption?” See their column for the answer.

PT Saga – Waiting on the Minds in the Sky

Called the Chrysler dealer this morning to tell him that we still have the stall-when-hot-and-driven-at-highway-speeds problem. The EGR replacement had no effect — except to further reduce my bank account and to frustrate me further. We’ve been at this problem for quite a while now.

He’s out of ideas. He and his tech are calling the big Chrysler PT techs in the sky. They are lighting candles of unnamed scents. They are putting paint on their faces. They are not calling back with any suggestions.

The PT stall saga continues!

A visit to rPath and a PT Saga

rPath
Tucker and I took a trip to Raleigh for the ribbon cutting, eating and drinking and talking and celebrating of rPath‘s new space near I-40 and NC 55. Erik Troan (CTO) and Billy Marshall (CEO) have really grown an impressive company and have some wonderful folks working with them including Michael K Johnson, Nathan Thomas and more folks I met tonight for the first time.

Representative Brad Miller of the 13th District was there to help cut the ribbon and to congratulate rPath for having been chosen to receive a $100K Small Business Innovation Research grant from the Department of Energy.

The afternoon temperature was over 100 degrees. The drive over was about 30 minutes at 65 mph. As soon as we pulled off the Interstate, the PT stalled. After about 5 minutes, I could start it again and get to rPath World Headquarters.

On the return, we drove around Cary a little. All was fine. We got on the highway. Sure enough we made it off the ramp and to the first stoplight where — the PT stalled. After 2 minutes, I could restart it only to have it fail soon after. Then after 2 more minutes, I could start it again. By using the handbrake at the next light, I kept the rpms up over 1500 and kept the car working til we got the rest of the way home.

Some how appropriate that RPMs were involved after visiting Erik Troan the inventor of the RPM (Red Hat Package Manager).

But grrrr. We now know that these things don’t fix the PT stalling when hot and driven fast problem: anything in the 60K mile tuneup, cleaning the throttle housing etc, firmware upgrade, power steering pressure sensor, fuel pump, EGR (exhaust gas recovery), and multi-switch and shift cable (these last two not really a candidates)..

PT gets EGR update

So after my crash test dummy experience, I get a call from the dealer. Seems that when the tech was removing the old EGR setup for a replacement, he noticed that one of the shift cables was worn to the point that it had no bushings. If that failed, I could no long shift! Better replace that (+$300).
So now we have had a 60K miles redo, a cleansing of the throttle housing etc, a new firmware upgrade, a new fuel pump, a new power steering pressure sensor, a new EGR setup and a new shift cable.
Will that solve the stalling while hot problem?
We’ll likely get some feedback this afternoon when I drive over to Rawlee in the 100+ degree weather. The perfect test case — and a scary one.

Crash Test Dummy? (PT saga)

I dropped my PT off at the dealer to see if an EGR replacement will fix the stall when hot problem it’s been having. I got there early and heard health stories from the very cordial guy who runs the service department. Then I took the shuttle into town — almost.

After stopping by at Duke with the other rider, we headed down 15-501 for Chapel Hill. But just before the new soon to be improved much much much safer superstreet intersection, the traffic suddenly can to a halt. Not slowly enough for us. The shuttle plowed into the back of a state Highway Department pickup which rammed into the back of a big ole red construction pickup which just missed bonking a police car which was conveniently on the scene.

Although the policeman was on the scene, the scene proceded very very slooooowly. No one was hurt. Only the shuttle was badly smashed.

While we were waiting for the paperwork to be done, the driver tested the shuttle which seemed drivable. So far so good.

Then there was another almost identical fender bender right past us. “Somebody ought to fix this intersection,” said the highway dept guy with a bit of ironic gallows humor.

At Don’s suggestion, I kept an eye out for the D bus. Just as he described it came down the access road right beside us. I waved it down and it stopped and took me to the Morehead Planetarium.

All this before 9:30 am.

Questions – literary and other

Rereading Major Barbara and wondering how heroic and right Shaw thought Undershaft should be considered? Is Undershaft’s commitment to the previous Undershaft’s dreams and obligations a kind of trueness? And what of Cusins? Is his Greek a goodness or a dressing?

A friend asks for the “Auden poem with lines “We must love each other or die.” A line readers grew to love and a line that Auden grew to hate. First he changed “or” to “and” then he dropped the whole stanza. Then he dropped the poem from his Collected and completely disavowed it as untrue. Later after Auden’s death, the original poem, “September, 1939” was restored. How good was Auden’s sense of his own poetry?

Were we all goovier in the swinging 60s or only those Swinging Londoners like the Zombies?

Saturday at the beach

Up early to run a couple of miles before everyone else got up. If I lived at the beach I would definitely do this every day. The beach just after dawn is a treat.
Then over to Orton Plantation and to Brunswicktown, after a round of Jungle Golf. I finished 3 over par which isn’t so bad for having never played the course before. I would be a regular golfer if more courses came with fiberglass animals and waterfalls.

Sharks at the beach; Carroboro gets uncool!

Down on Oak Island where we saw a 4 foot sand shark pulled onto the pier a few yards from our room. The seas have brought in a lot of seaweed which is washing on the beach and bathers. Neither the seaweed nor the shark have detered anyone from being out on the beach and in the warm water.

But in Carrboro, things are getting decidedly uncool. The new Carrboro News reports that the Carr Mill management has banned “unauthorized performers” from the very public Weaver Street Commons. The Dancing Man, the flute player CJ, and even the beloved Hooping Women. (Other sources include Herald-Sun and Concerned Citizen WillR).

Jones to India (end of August)

From August 22 – 30, I’ll be in India for the first time starting out in Delhi where I’ll be a panelist at the “Owning the Future: Ideas and their role in the digital age” symposium sponsored by Red Hat India and Indian Institute of Technology, then heading up into Himachal Pradesh to Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj for a few days.

If you have any suggestions for me — what to see, what to do, what not to do, what to take, how to survive the monsoon season in the Himalayas etc, please let me know here or by email.

Tales of my PT!

After last weekend’s PT stall out, I took the car back to the dealer (again). They kept the car overnight and couldn’t duplicate the problem.
Then the local Chrysler guys got on a conference call to the big Chrysler in the sky.
In consultation with the Mighty Minds, they decided to take a look at — get this — the EGR valve — that sounds familiar! Turns out that at about 5 years, the Exhaust Gas Recovery (EGR) can get a bit flakey. They went had used the computer to put pressure on the valve to see if it would effect the idling. It didn’t when it should have.
New solution: change the EGR.
“We can do that in an hour.” ok. Call back in about 45 minutes. “Err we don’t have the part. There is no PT EGR within 50 miles of here. We can get it tomorrow tho.”
We’ll be on the coast tomorrow. Can I leave the car there?
“Yes and we won’t charge you for storage ;->”

Tales of the PT continue on Monday!

WCHL and RHAT’s Greg deK on BarCampRDU

WCHL interviewed Red Hat’s Greg deKoenigsberg and some others [mp3] about BarCampRDU. Despite the title “Red Hat offers BarCamp” the story is a good one and Greg never says “hey Red Hat did this conference;” he’s right on top of it being done by volunteers and that Red Hat provided the space — and his help which was greatly appreciated.

I do agree with the textual description “150 of the Triangle’s brightest computer programmers gathered at the headquarters of software company Red Hat this Saturday.” Boldness added by me.

Official Blooker 2007 Announcement

This just in from the Lulus:

The 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize is now open for business.

Judges (more about us here):

Three categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Webcomic

The prize money:

The Overall Winner will receive $10,000 (US)
The two category winners will receive $2,500 (US)

The entry deadline – Monday, January 15, 2007

The contest is open to any book published before the entry deadline that is based on a website (and meets all other eligibility criteria) – this includes blooks that are self-published as well as those published via traditional means.

TeachFor.US chooses Lyceum

Adam Geller, a current Teach For America teacher, has just announced TeachFor.Us, a special instance of the ibiblio developed multi-user blogsphere Lyceum. TeachFor.Us is available to all TeachFor.US (a UNC School of Journalism grad) describes the community this way:

TeachFor.Us is a blogging community created by a current corps member for all Teach For America corps members to document their teaching experiences.

TeachFor.Us makes it easy for all corps members to have a blog without having to worry about any technical aspects. Just register (takes about 5 seconds) and start blogging immediately! Every blog in the community gets a customized web address — http://yourblog.teachfor.us.

TeachFor.Us is free for all corps members. There are no costs now, later or ever!

The TeachFor.Us first-year Big Goal is 100 active bloggers in the community.

Links:
Teach For America
Teach For American blogsphere
Lyceum the open source blogsphere
ibiblio.org developers of Lyceum

Contacts:
TeachFor.US – Adam Geller ageller AT gmail .com
Lyceum – John Bachir jjb AT ibiblio .org, Fred Stutzman fred AT ibiblio .org
ibiblio – Paul Jones jones AT unc .edu

BarCampRDU is great success

BarCampRDU was the 3rd unconference that I’ve been involved in organizing in the past 18 months. And I’d have to say that it was the best one so far. Fred did a bang up job of using the BarCamp infrastructure of wikis, blogs and lists to work for the conference in advance and in securing sponsorship.

Podcastercon drew over 300 people, but it was national — over half of the attendees weren’t from this area. Triangle Blogger Conference was my first and although it went well, I think our version depended too much on having too many people in the same room for too long. Also both of these were on the UNC campus in the winter which meant that parking and the like were more challenging.

BarCampRDU
had the advantage of a great location and very good sponsorship from local tech oriented organizations — thanks to Red Hat (for the location and more) and to Lulu.com, rPath, 6th Sense Analytics, BlogAds, Aurora Funds, and the Council on Entrepreneurial Development.

Some press:
News and Observer did a fine BarCampRDU write up on Saturday (the morning of)

as did the WRAL.com tech blog earlier.

on the WRAL hosted Tech Wire
and Local Tech Wire itself
ZDNet blogger Ed Burnette reports as it happens

and WRAL’s Local Tech Wire has a good writeup.

About 150 pictures of BarCampRDU are posted publically on Flickr

Fred’s summary and thank yous are here.

BarCampRDU

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