Author: cdwan

This guy has a fine review of Starcraft. This one is much better though.

Based on posts to a Grid Computing mailing list, I got a call from an editor at bioinform asking if she could speak with me about this ensembl project I’ve been hacking at for the past year. I said “sure,” and we talked for an hour or so.

It’s turned into a one page article. With the exception of a detail or two, it’s pretty accurate.

I revel in the brief glow of fame. A one pager in a trade rag. Aaaahhhhhh…

In the category of “that’s really, really gross,” Jen called (from work) yesterday at around dinnertime and asked me to bring her a new pair of shoes. She had to throw away the ones she was wearing. I’ll skip the details.

Since I posted my gripe-o-gram about the laptop repair here, It seems only fair to post the follow up. I got first an email and then a phone call from the guy who owns the Apple stores for all of Minnesota. He seems a nice enough fellow, and I was completely impressed that my complaint got attention so far up the food chain so fast. I mean, we’ve got a “market manager” calling me on a Sunday to follow up.

He’s convinced that the repairs in question all actually happened, all the parts listed on the invoice were really replaced, and that I got a pretty good deal on the whole thing ($1,200 worth of repairs for $650). I asked if he had access to information beyond the invoice that demonstrates to his satisfaction that all is right with the world. He said “yes.” I asked if I could see it. He said “no.” At that point, we were pretty much done. I can either take him at his word, or go to the better business bureau.

Fact is, they repaired my laptop. In all likelihood, they did replace the screen. It was an expensive accident, but I feel pretty satisfied with where we are now.

He offered to fix the dent which is still in my laptop shell, and waive the labor costs (an additional $350 cost to me. This is the bit that I got refunded on site by being a twerp about how it had clearly not been replaced). I’ve responded that if he tells me it was already replaced, I believe him. No further repairs needed.

We ate the first meal out of the garden today. I picked spinach and radishes, which, garnished with the rest of a meal, was a fine meal. 🙂 The spinach was everything I had hoped and dreamed. Dark, leafy, green, and crunchy. The Marigolds appear to be working, since the spinach and lettuce are now getting larger, rather than remaining a constant size.

Are you supposed to harvest spinach and leaf lettuce one leaf at a time, or pick a whole plant all at once. My instincts say to pick the leaves so as to let the plant keep producing them. If there are other traditions, I’d love to hear them.

Watched “Finding Nemo” this evening, because that was the intellectual level for which I was prepared. It was perfect.

So, I feel slightly, but not completely boned. I got my laptop back and ended up Via a painful multi-hour process

What’s the best Linux distribution right now? What are people using and why?

We have to choose to stay with Redhat (and move to Fedora), pay for RHEL, do whatever it is that SUSE needs, build BSD locally, or something else.

I received the “Creative Activities” booklet from the MN state fair today. Having entered pickles in last year’s competition, I apparently qualify for the mailed-out, paper version of the rules. Were I to enter this year (God willing, we’ll live in Rhode Island by August), I would enter the following “premiums:”

(For the uninitiated, a “premium” at the state fair is a category of competition).

PICKLES:
1159: Beet
1161: Bread and Butter, sweet
1164: Dill, with garlic but no other vegetable
1167: Peppers, hot
1168: Watermelon, sweet.

My watermelon pickles would rock their tiny category. 🙂

More moves in the home selling dance.

We went to see The Magic Flute at the Ordway theatre in Saint Paul last night. It was the first really positive artistic experience I’ve had in a while, so I’ll share