Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2007 > End Of January 2007 Edition
The Big Project is finished, at least enough to be presentable. I wish, not so much that I had more time, but that I had the means to make the prototype of the Project available to the public because it was better than the final product.
I now realize that someone went really nuts with normalization of the original data; I could not understand what they were thinking when I had to work around all those database tables to get the Project to work. Folks, any value that is more or less unique (like the name of an author or publisher) does not deserve its own table. Special tables are for stuff that gets ladled out many times.
Anyway, now that the Project is put aside for the time being, I can catch up with my printer and iMac work.
Madoka, my new home computer, has been behaving itself lately. At least it hasn't done any spontaneous reboots for awhile.
I just made the cutoff date for shipped the WinXP 64-bit back to the place I got it from.
Madre's laptop will not take Windows XP, so I bought a copy of Windows 98 SE and installed that. I found this site where drivers for old computers are available; from there I got all the hardware drivers for the laptop. Now it runs good as new.
One morning a couple of days ago I thought to make myself a sack lunch. So I opened the bottom cupboard, where the big tub of peanut butter was, to find a large hole on one edge of the lid. There were also little yellow scraps on the cupboard floor. I thought this was spilt Parmesan cheese, but that container was still sealed. And the same scraps were in the peanut butter itself.
Yep, we got mice.
The folks set a mouse trap inside the cupboard that evening. The next day I heard jiggling inside the cupboard. That was odd given that Padre told me the trap had sprung the night before. When I looked inside, there was a mouse. Dead. More than dead: mangled! A visit to the Wikipedia article on mice prepared me with the knowledge that mice turn cannibal when desperate. Evidently the other mice took advantage of their fellow's misfortune.
There are mice still there, and the folks intend to keep setting traps until they are all gone.
I am told that this is the first time in living memory (well, my living memory) that the Indianapolis Colts have ever made it to the Super Bowl. Everyone's been talking about this for the past week or so. One guy even spray-painted one of his houses with the upside-down blue horseshoe that is the Colts' emblem. This area is going to go nuts if the Colts win this coming Sunday.
As for myself, I am not all that excited; any enthusiasm for spectator sports got burned out in high school. But at least I know what's going on. Unlike a certain sibling who does not have cable television and is finding blue hair dye impossible to find.