September 2008

There were 79 posts published in September 2008 (this is page 8 of 8).

Hanna

I had a dream last weekend about wanting a generator. I’m a geek, though, so wanting a generator is a year-round thing for me. Still, I don’t normally dream of one. And last night I had a dream about charging a armful of rechargeable batteries.

I suppose I’m wary of Tropical Storm Hanna. And Ike’s (or Josephine’s) follow-up act could really be devastating if Hanna hits and loosens the soil considerably. Any trees that might withstand Hanna would be pushovers for Ike or Josephine.

Keep an eye on the weather, y’all. It doesn’t look like this will be a dry hurricane season around here.

Warranty calls continue

When will they ever learn?

We got another call tonight from the warranty scam artists, this time using the phone number 702-520-9150 as their fake Caller ID. Once the nice gentleman got on the line I bum-rushed him.

“Can I have the make and model of your vehicle?” asked “Mike.”

“How can you live with yourself?” I interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“How can you live with yourself, working for such a sleazy company?”

Click! The next thing I heard was hold music, which turned to silence a moment later. I realized I was keeping a trunk busy on the company’s phone system, so I left my phone on hold for another 30 minutes, padding their long distance bill just for fun.

I might get even nastier the next time they call. Or better yet, I’ll try out some digits when I’m alone on the trunk. Maybe I can figure out how to make outgoing calls, or find my way to their voicemail system.

Waiting on, waiting for

Kelly and I chuckled when we saw the N&O’s headline this weekend: “New Orleans not waiting on Gustav.”

Waiting on? Did New Orleans take a job waiting tables? Maybe NOLA is in the weeds, had a few big parties seated all at once and needs another server to help out, so that’s why Gustav isn’t being waited on. Then again, maybe the N&O’s editor meant to write “waiting for Gustav,” which would make so much more sense, grammatically-speaking.

(See what happens when one marries an editor?)

iPoof

Saturday, I joined the family in the Ridge Road pool just one minute before the lifeguards called everyone out for approaching thunderstorms. I hadn’t even had time to get my chest wet. I did, however, have time to dunk my iPod Shuffle, which was hiding in my bathing suit pocket. It was supposed to stay in the car but sometimes it doesn’t listen.

I think its goose is cooked. I’m a little sad, but them’s the breaks.

Asterisk and alarm working well together

After monitoring my alarm panel for a few days I have to say things are working extremely well! I’m still not parsing the messages the panel sends but I do get them reliably. As of now I get alerted via text message whenever the alarm is tripped. Actually, I get three alerts as for each test I get an event for “alarm tripped” and two for “alarm canceled.”

What I need to do now is write a little PERL app to convert the event code to text. I also might rewrite the AlarmReceiver Asterisk app to dump events into MySQL rather than randomly-named text files.

I also want to explore how to make the alarm report all events (a door opens, motion, etc) , not just when the alarm is tripped. Since I’ve got a phone line already dedicated to the alarm it shouldn’t be a problem to “nail it up” all the time. Alarm companies monitor a lot of their customers using “alarm loop” lines from the phone company, so it should be possible to monitor the whole system at all times.

Quoted in the paper

I was quoted in the paper today regarding a proposed topless club on Capital Boulevard.

“We don’t want a concentration of places,” said Mark Turner, chairman of the East Citizens Advisory Council.

“It drags down the property values or the safety of the hotels, like the Milner Inn,” Turner said. “Something like this happening sets us back.”

While the quote was accurate I wish I’d had more time to collect my thoughts. A neighbor had given the reporter my work phone number and he called me when I was right in the middle of crunch time on a big project. Deadlines notwithstanding, I should have asked to call him back. I wonder if its just human nature for one to wonder if one sounds like a moron whenever quoted in the paper.

At any rate, yesterday morning I thought of a big reason I’m wary of the project: robberies. Strip clubs are cash-driven businesses. Latinos have a reputation (right or wrong) for keeping large amounts of cash on them. I fear a Latino strip club will become a robbery magnet and overburden our already-overworked officers with more robberies to solve.

September Morn

September Morn
Neil Diamond

Stay for just a while
Stay, and let me look at you
It’s been so long, I hardly knew you
Standing in the door
Stay with me a while
I only wanna talk to you
We’ve traveled halfway ’round the world
To find ourselves again

September morn
We danced until the night became a brand new day
Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play
September morning still can make me feel that way
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