un chapeau sur ma tête

noweb4u @ 2009-12-12T01:51:00

2009-12-12T06:51:47Z

haha okay so this is the best ever

I commented on an LJ post. A procmail recipe forwards a quick summary of the post to my cell phone via sms.

I'm holding the boy, who's asleep in my arms. His butt happens to be on my cell phone, which happens to be on vibrate.

Hilarity ensues as the sleeping baby freaks out for a second, makes a weird freaked out squeak noise. He then falls immediately asleep again.

KIDS ARE HILARIOUS AND AWESOME GUYS

Wanna know something screwed up?

2009-11-13T06:58:20Z

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/dte-worker-electrocuted-091111

This substation was, according to an over the air news report, at 8 and evergreen, 2 miles from my work. At the time of the incident, our office experienced a brownout, as did a customer down the street according to our logs.

kinda screwed up when you see stuff like that.

As a worker at a utility (and a human being) my heart goes out to his family. Obviously the outside plant folks have a much more dangerous job than the inside plant people like myself, but honestly you should see some of the places us inside guys go too - the difference in risk doesn't always seem that great. (I've had to do a lot of live wiring on our -48v DC plant, and have worked near energized, open 480v 3 phase, and pulled wire near high voltage bus bars that go through building risers and basement utility areas.

Always respect your utilities, one slip on or near power or gas lines could be your last.

And though it wouldn't have helped this guy, I'll take this as an opportunity to plug 811. Always call 811 3 days before you dig. Even if you're just planting a bush or tilling land to make a garden. The call is free, the flagging is free.

The life (or phone/cable/gas/sewer/water service) you save may be your own. (and if you dig up utilities, you're financially liable for the repairs, and in some states criminally liable for the damage)

My quasi-weekly post about the family

2009-10-17T20:35:14Z

I've been unbelievably busy!

Previously, on noweb4u:
Becky in hospital for 2.5 weeks, baby born, baby in hospital for week

And now, our feature presentation:

William came home on Tues, Oct 6. We had a few friends over and had our first meal at home as a family as well as our first ordinary taco night. Good times were had all around.

I don't have much to say. We're not sleeping much!

Here's some pictures you'll all enjoy behind the cut!

All of the pictures are and more are here: http://www.timmins.net/gallery2/v/will

I apologize, livejournal!

2009-10-03T13:45:43Z

I've been totally playing around behind your back with that evil temptress, facebook, and failed to update you all on the happenings as a result. The good news is, all the pics are not locked away in some wonderful web 2.0 place, but rather on my very nice gallery, so you don't have to have facebook to play.

Billy was placed in the NICU immediately after birth. He was grunting while breathing and hyperventilating. He was under a tent at 30% oxygen for a while, they backed him down to room air, and got his tent off for a little bit. He wasn't really sleeping though and began to slip a bit, so they put him back under the tent, and he finally got some rest. He slept for the better part of a day or so, he's still a pretty groggy little guy.

Once he was under the tent for a while, they decided we could do some kangaroo care for 15 minutes on a nasal cannula.

More pictures here:
http://www.timmins.net/gallery2/v/will/happybirthday0/

He's made a great deal of progress quickly, and last night they moved him to nasal cannula full time so we can hold him as often as we want, and he can try feeding whenever he wants. He hasn't had his first taste of milk yet but he'll get it soon enough. Mom's been pumping away furiously to get things primed and he'll be feeding before we know it.

Last night the doctors said he should be going home in "a few days" which was the first statement we've gotten in english, rather than their moonman NICU language where they can talk for 20 minutes without giving you even a ballpark estimate of how long he'll stay (is it days? Weeks? Months?). I swear these guys got this talent from lawyers (ask one if something's illegal to do sometime, you'll see what I mean, after you've paid for an hour of their time and left still not knowing if it's illegal or not). It may be no coincidence that most of these nurses went to med schools that were also law schools. :)

So hooray for small victories. Becky is being released today. It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed for the first time but it will suck to go without the little one.

Happy birthday William!

2009-09-30T17:14:35Z

Happy birthday William!
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Evolution

2009-09-27T21:07:34Z

Evolution
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Lol

okay good lord where do I even start

2009-09-08T04:09:30Z

Things that have transpired since my last update:

We got the kid's room all set basically, just waiting on some wall decor that's enroute. Lil mijo has a place to call his own.

Here are some pictures of him, btw: http://www.timmins.net/gallery2/v/will/31weeks/

Got to visit with my aunt from texas for a day. Had a good time despite it being so short.

I injured myself on a patch of oil in my garage, slipped and fell, hit my eyebrow against the corner of a shelf really hard. Went to make sure I didn't screw anything up because it was bleeding like hell, and they found my heart rate was 135 in triage. I was admitted, for tachycardia, not for my eye injury. They were debating stitches but decided against it as the way the wound is, it would not have much or any benefit, but it was borderline.

I underwent a lot of tests, I was up to 160 bpm on the stress test, had a heart ultrasound, all sorts of fun shit. They tried beta blockers, anti anxiety meds, fluids, everything. Couldn't get it down. My heart rate was 115 when they tested me in the middle of my sleep. The next day it went down to 85. They could find nothing wrong. Rhythms were good the whole time, no explaination of what caused it. Released with no explanation. They blamed the caffiene in the 20oz of diet mt dew I had earlier that day and said that probably had a lot to do with it. Makes no sense as Mt Dew actually has the same caffiene content as a pepsi max. Meh.

I cut caffiene out of my life. It was horrible. For a whole day. Motrin 800 cleared that up for a bit, didn't have any lingering problems. I've since had more caffiene than I had that day to test, and my heart rate didn't even go over 100 bpm. Got me there, I have no idea. Maybe I'll see my doctor like they recommended. (Hey wait, aren't you guys doctors though?? I WAS in a hospital of all places....)

Anyway, during this time my son also had fetal tachycardia, and so did becky. At one point we were all under observation for about an hour or so. Good times.

Otherwise we're doing fine.

This weekend we cleaned out my van. took 1.5 40 gallon trash bags of pop bottles and other returnables out. Took 1.5 bags of trash out. Removed probably 20 cubic feet of various and sundry computer and telephone hardware. Amazing how much space is in my van now.

Also we changed its oil, air filter, thermostat, changed half of the spark plugs*, used a solvent paste to unfog the lenses of the headlights. It's not a bad car, though it has some serious deficiencies. Guess it'll have to wait until the banks decide to become craniorectally uninverted before I can get something made this decade. Oh well. It's paid for and runs quite well. :)

* Fuck you, Chrysler, for putting the spark plugs in a part of the engine compartment where I will eventually have to remove the alternator and the intake air system in order to replace the plugs, for real! The other 3 are so ridiculously easy!

wooo!!

2009-08-22T03:37:02Z

http://www.phonegod.net/

I managed to get back dankaye's domain name and rehosted his site from my backups!

(Don't miss the menalto gallery install at http://www.phonegod.net/gallery !)

(Update: This also means his livejournal layout and posts are NOW UNBROKEN as he linked to images on this server)

Boat race

2009-08-16T17:50:08Z

Boat race
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Evidently there is a boat race that passes through port huron where the boat has to be some inflatable device or something along those lines. It's a bit bizarre.

Went to Canada for Mexican food....

2009-08-16T06:15:12Z

Went to Canada for Mexican food....
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

(yea I had poutine too because its awesome)

The gravesite of most of Thomas Edison's immediate family

2009-08-15T18:18:16Z

The gravesite of most of Thomas Edison's immediate family
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

The Most Uncomfortable Man In The World

2009-08-15T04:09:25Z

The Most Uncomfortable Man In The World
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

I don't always use recliners - but when I do, I prefer to not use this one.

Stay comfy, my friends.

We're taking the weekend to celebrate our anniversary on the 19th and to get away one last time bef

2009-08-15T02:07:05Z

We're taking the weekend to celebrate our anniversary on the 19th and to get away one last time before the kid's around :)
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Part of last night's dinner... Howie bread with bacon and cheddar

2009-07-21T03:59:02Z

Part of last night's dinner... Howie bread with bacon and cheddar
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Our basement stairs (those are green beans! :) )

2009-07-21T03:58:05Z

Our basement stairs (those are green beans! :) )
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Guys!

2009-07-19T22:15:54Z

Check this out - thanks to slash616 for the link. Great mashup of Nirvana and Rick Astley - even the video is synced well - Rick's dancing to the right beat and everything. Well done!

PS: baby's doing great, everything's on schedule thus far

The trouble with trip computers is that they enable procrastinators.

2009-07-16T23:57:40Z

The trouble with trip computers is that they enable procrastinators.
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

New Message

2009-06-29T02:04:45Z

New Message
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

noweb4u @ 2009-06-27T17:04:00

2009-06-27T21:06:19Z

http://www.timmins.net/gallery2/v/will/21weeks/

More pics of the little one!

He's coming along quite well, things are going great!

How to get Exchange Active Sync working on the Palm Pre

2009-06-06T16:04:46Z

If you do not have a SSL certificate, EAS won't work. It won't say "you can't use http as a protocol you have to use https" or anything sensible like that - so i beat my head on the wall alot about this, and ended up having to use ethereal to verify what's happening. So here's what you do.

First, create a certificate signing request for the IIS server - if you don't know how to do this, google is your friend. MAKE SURE THE COMMON NAME ON THE CERT IS A PUBLIC DNS NAME YOU CAN HIT WITH THE PRE!

Take the CSR, and either sign it with your own key, pay for a real certificate, or use CACert like I did.

If you paid for the certificate, take your new certificate to IIS, and be done with it. Good for you.

If you're cheap like me, and used CACert or your own OpenSSL CA, here's what you do, it's non obvious.

Set up a POP or imap account on your phone, and email yourself the CA certificates as .crt files.

Once this is done, open the .crt files on your pre (YOU CANNOT DO THIS VIA THE WEB BROWSER IT WILL NOT WORK) - open the .crt files by clicking once to download, then clicking again once the progress bar is full. You'll go to the certificate manager.

Click trust certificate, and make sure you can hit the EAS server with https in a web browser. If you can, now try it on the Pre, it should work.

\o/

Boy

2009-06-04T17:30:00Z

More Pictures

noweb4u @ 2009-05-26T00:22:00

2009-05-26T04:39:25Z

I've been maintaining this data on Facebook but decided that now that it's complete, it'd be better put here where there's no funky limit on how long my data can be.

http://tinyurl.com/maytrip2009 (before tinyurl, that google maps URL was over 900 characters long)

Total Miles this 3 day weekend (estimated): 691 Miles
Total driving time (est): 11 hours, 32 minutes
10 out of michigan's 12 area codes were covered today:
231, 248, 313, 517, 586, 616, 734, 810, 947, 989
(We were about 30 minutes away from 269 but decided against trying to collect all 11 lower penninsula area codes)

We slept in our own bed each night.

We attended a memorial service, a birthday party, and did extensive yard work. We ate hamburgers every day. In fact, we consumed only two meals not comprising of hamburgers or hotdogs (our traditional Sunday brunch, and our dinner at mancinos in Clare).

Woooooo

Also: 17 weeks and counting on the little one. We'll find out what its sex is at 20 weeks. Can't wait!

noweb4u @ 2009-05-02T23:19:00

2009-05-03T03:20:55Z

14 weeks. Woo!

Everything i could possibly say about this is probably already going through your head

2009-04-16T16:21:32Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8001644.stm

So western digital decided to send me a customer satisfaction survey...

2009-04-15T01:37:27Z

After my hard disk debacle, where I've been trying for about a week to get the failed drive replaced (read: even showing up as having a warranty on their website)

The following is the completed survey. I had to reformat it to show it here.

1. Please rate the representative with whom you interacted across the traits below in your last contact with WD.
Courtesy (Very Satisfied)
Knowledge (Satisfied)
Support (Very Dissatisfied)
Satisfaction (Very Dissatisfied)

Additional Comments (Please limit your comments within 2000 characters)

This process is assinine, and i'd rather bash myself in the face with a hammer than go through it again. I've wasted a week or more trying to get my product RMAed, and finally only because microcenter has good records do i have a valid warranty on my drive. The entire process seemed like pulling teeth, and inspired a great deal of doubt on my plan to buy a retail drive with a 3 year warranty when i have to waste considerable time and deal with an assinine trouble ticket system that forgets my email address every few hours.

And I have wisdom teeth coming in, and pulling those would be a welcome release from pain. I just want to be clear that when I am talking about pulling teeth, I mean good, healthy ones that cause no issue. I don't want to imply that when I'm done, there's a good feeling. After getting the warranty activated, the system would repeatedly malfunction trying to create an advanced RMA. I guess I'll be seeing my hard disk sometime next month at this rate.

The employee was useful, but the whole process was unnecessary. I have no idea why western digital wouldn't at least honor the drive's warranty based on its date of manufacture to speed things along, that would have been fine with me since it was only 1 month between its date of manufacture and date of sale.

2. How likely are you to recommend this product to your friends, colleagues, or family?
(Neutral)

3. How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?

(Very High)

Additional Comments (Please limit your comments within 2000 characters)

Your website was worthless in ascertaining the actual cause of the issue. Only a vague statement that implied that the data may be incorrect and I have the opportunity to correct it was the only clue that something could be done about the situation. If you're not going to honor warranties because someone didn't register the sale, then come out and say "no record of drive being sold, please contact us to confirm" or something like that. Don't simply say the drive can't be returned under warranty. I'm sure there's some attorney general around somewhere salivating at the thought of something that retarded and misleading.

4. If you had tried to resolve your question prior to speaking to a live agent or sending us an email, how easy or difficult was it to use the features below? Please select N/A if it's not applicable.

Support website (Very Difficult)

Additional Comments (Please limit your comments within 2000 characters)

Support website was useless, it mentioned various procedures but didn't imply that I actually had to undergo it for western digital to honor the warranty they sold it with and that this was a routine thing.

5. Did you attempt to handle your request through self-service (via our website) before contacting us directly?
(Yes)

6. Please rate the product you contacted us about based on the attributes below.
Ease of Use (Very Satisfied)
Reliability (Very Dissatisfied)
Documentation (Very Satisfied)
Design and Appearance (Very Satisfied)
Price (Very Satisfied)

Additional Comments (Please limit your comments within 2000 characters)

Damn thing died in a month of having it. What more can I say regarding reliability?

Otherwise, it's a great drive.

7. Would you like to be notified on news and updates related to WD products?
(No)

Additional Comments (Please limit your comments within 2000 characters)

Why this entire process took over a week is mystifying. You'd think the rep's first response would be something like "hey, we don't see any record of that drive being sold. Can you score us a reciept to confirm it? Thanks!" instead of some strange canned response telling me the same shit that's on the website.