First Summer Vacation 2011

Work

Last week I had finished my reimaging work on the library's Macs. Everything is up to date: Snow Leopard, the Apple and Microsoft applications, the file/print utility, all of it. And the two experimental CardCat kiosks for testing: Those use Fedora Linux, the Xfce visual interface and Google Chrome for ease of setup and for ease of use.

The first official day of my first summer vacation this year, and already I have had to visit the library. Someone had turned off one of the experimental CardCat kiosks (or at least logged out of it), and I have had to restart it. Then I had to print out reminders of the staff refrigerator clean-out. I wanted to use the color printer, only to find that my copier card does not work on the new vending posts next to each copier. Fortunately, the periodicals supervisor was there to help get me a new card. I got the reminder sheets in on time. It all worked out well.

As for the kiosks, I found a way to make the kiosk auto-logon so nobody will have to do this again. The problem with that is that I need GNOME, not Xfce, to make it work. Long story short, I have to redesign the kiosks when I get back.

Other than those, there were only two tickets that required my attention. One was a downed printer. The other seemed to imply that the user did not know to wait for the green light on the Mac OS X login screen before actually logging in.

Vacation

Wednesday was yardwork day, with the mowing and the trimming and the raking. I also shredded all the bills from last year in time for the trash pickup the next day. (I discovered they come at around 10 a.m.) I did promise myself that I will clear out all the papers and truly obsolescent books (Windows 2003, anyone?) from the upper room this summer. My impetus was the silverfish that got away from my attempt to destroy it.

Then I had to pick up my sister the editor from this tire place just outside Muncie. She followed my brother's suggestion to get new tires online, and then have them installed at the tire place. She also had the brakes (what brakes there were left) replaced. I drove her back the next morning to pick up her car.

Windshield, Meet Rock

The vacation was uneventful until I was a couple of miles outside my home town on my way back from Muncie. As I was driving down the road, a large rock flew over the hood of the car and landed smack on the lower corner of the windshield on the far (passenger) side. This is not like the stone that put a small crack in the windshield last year. This rock was at least an inch wide: From its point of impact a web of cracks erupted throughout the far side of the windshield, one following the path of the outer tip of the wiper. It also destroyed the far wiper.

I took the car to my insurance agent to have it looked over; then I called the auto glass people Madre and my sister the teacher used to fix their car windows. The next day I learned that the cost would be just less than four hundred dollars, which is affordable. The repair will be on Saturday.