Daley Ponderings

When a customer says that he has a smaller project than the one I just did, don't pay attention, and think about the quote, rather than simply estimating the time as less than the previous project. Yesterday, I did a project for a friend (one who let me have better access than average... (More)

I don't know if it is only relevant to Allegheny County or if it is more universal, but a friend asked me to write a parcel id (parcel/block/lot) parser to help him out in his real estate searches.  It was kind of a fun project (3 hours) and it was neat to see how well it worked out in... (More)

As some of you know, we have been looking for a house for the last couple of months, and we think we have found one!  I asked a couple guys from church to come look at it today, and give their thoughts, and they generally approved.  Someday, I'll probably make the kitchen nicer (ie.... (More)

Shortly after I posted the first analysis of my time , I realized that my hours per day calculation were kind of off, since I was counting 7 day weeks, and I basically never work on Sundays.  As I am redoing the calculations, I see that I must have been doing something strange to try get... (More)

Last week (actually within the span of three days) four people asked me if I am pregnant.  Really, you ask?  Yes, really, they did.  One of them was Jonathan, whom you have read has been praying fervently for a little sister, and has not yet learned that you don't ask women that... (More)

Just when I thought I was a geek, the bar is raised... I forgot to post this a while ago: Tim Hawkins and the "homeschool family".  Prairie Home Sausage is kind of funny - and has a picture of a really neat merry-go-round.   Lastly, being... (More)

I was washing my hands at the bathroom sink, and Noah came excitedly running up with a toy boat.  But in his excitement, he smashed his face into the corner of the sink.  He cried surprisingly little, considering that there was blood in his mouth.  But I didn't notice the chip... (More)

We have been getting more and more sales calls lately.  I try to take the time to report them to the do not call lists, both for our state and for the country.  We are supposed to get $100 for each violation (where the caller pays $1000).  But, I haven't ever gotten any money.... (More)

We headed out Friday morning, listening to The Nutmeg of Consolation by Patrick O'Brian on the way.  At our first stop, for gas, Jon realized that he hadn't brought his wallet.  One of our stops was at our "usual" rest area, the one with the pedestrian walkways over the... (More)

Peter was nice enough to loan me a Kill-A-Watt for a couple weeks to investigate power usage around our home.  I have thought about buying one before, but borrowing one is certainly better, though it is quite a bit of fun to test out devices to see how much power they use. I... (More)

Here is a brief review of Organizing for your Brain Type by Lanna Nakone .  This is a neat book that gives some explanation about why some people have trouble keeping things organized and why some have trouble understanding those others. She puts people in four different groups,... (More)

As has already been observed, I haven't been so diligent at writing down the doings and sayings of my sons.  Here's what I did write down and what other stuff I can remember. 8/24 - Noah built a block tower with four blocks. Recently, Noah has been patient for the prayer before... (More)

pure-ftpd isn't designed to work with TCP wrappers, which is unfortunate, because then I can't simply add an ip address to /etc/hosts.deny to block the hackers when they guess passwords.  But, since the hackers have tried to login to my servers thirty thousand times this month, and... (More)

I read that Harry Potter invented electricity, and that it wasn't Benjam Jam, so it must be true. Source for the answer: unasked.com Original source for the question: ADustyFrame . (More)

Everyone always says how user-friendly Windows is, and as I sit here waiting for my Windows computer to endlessly update itself, I am struck by how much harder it is to update my Windows laptop than all of my Linux (Debian) servers put together. On Debian: Type "aptitude",... (More)