Category Archives: Administrative

Administrative, Space

Job Bleg

46 Comments

I’ve been running my trap lines with my contacts, but I might as well see if any of my readers know of anything. The blog doesn’t pay the bills, and I’m kind of at the end of my financial tether, so if anyone is aware of any jobs out there in the industry, I’d appreciate a tip. I can relocate, but my preference would be either the Denver area or southern California, due to existing housing.

[Update a while later]

For those interested, a brief version of my resume can be found at my personal web site. I’m looking for work in space systems engineering and management, preferably manned space. I could also do temp work, though that’s kind of hard for the big companies under the FAR, unless I come in through a job shop, which skims a lot in overhead for no value added.

[Friday afternoon update]

For those suggesting that I try to make a living writing columns, I’m already doing that as much as I can. There’s no way that it will pay my bills, even if I did it full time. It just doesn’t pay that well. I have to be earning on the order of several tens of dollars an hour to keep ahead of them. The only place I can do that is in the space industry.

I do appreciate all the kind thoughts, though.

[Friday evening update]

Several have commented that I should put a tip jar up. I’ve had one up for years. Unfortunately, it’s not Paypal but Amazon, but I think that you can use any form of payment with it. Is it not appearing in the upper left corner?

Not that I’m asking for handouts, but the thought is appreciated.

Administrative, General

Busy Weekend

7 Comments

Slow posting because I’m finishing up painting and starting a new project–reguttering the front where we removed the gutters over the garage, and putting them in on the rest of the front of the house where there was never any, but now we have new landscaping to protect from the rainy season which starts in a couple weeks.

The challenge is that it turns out that the roof fascia board slopes in the direction opposite the one that I want it to in order to put one of the down spouts at the end of the house. In fact, the whole house seems tilted slightly toward the east three inches or so end to end (probably settling toward the intracoastal, since it was built on fill). So it works fine for the east spout, but not so much for the west one. Which means an ugly angle on the westward side to force the water to run uphill, so to speak. Still not sure what to do about that one, but now I know why the old gutter never worked very well…

The other joyous part of the adventure is that the fascia isn’t vertical, as the hangars expect–it’s seventeen degrees off with a slight overhang. So I get to cut a bunch of wedges from two-by-four to make up the difference. Which is where our new Craftsman double-bevel mitre saw, that we got for crown and base molding installation (which I haven’t started yet) will come in handy.

I’ll also add that laser levelers are well worth having. It would have been a real PITA to figure this out with a standard bubble and tacked string.

Administrative

House Painting

That’s why no posting this weekend. We tore out some shrubbery, and it was a good opportunity to paint the house, which we had never done since we bought it, four years ago. New landscaping, too, so drive-up value should be improved considerably.

Administrative, Technology and Society

Under Attack

9 Comments

Some @n@l orifice is sending out spam using my long-time email address as the return address. So I get all the bounces. Typically, it’s about a thousand emails, in addition to the usual spam, and this is the third time this week (which makes me wonder how many of them don’t bounce, and actually get through). And I can’t filter it, because I have to know if email bounces, in case someone I was actually trying to send email to bounced.

But when these attacks happen, I have to just delete it all, because life is too short to go through them on the off chance that one in a thousand will actually be a legitimate bounced email.

I know Clark’s law (no, not Clarke’s Laws). The one that says that any sufficiently advanced amount of cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice, but it’s hard for me to believe that this is not intentional. I don’t know if my having to deal with all of this extraneous unfilterable email is the intent, or it’s just a side effect of the desire to make me look like a purveyor of p3nis enlargement devices and drugs.

Anyway, if I seem unusually testy, you know why.

Administrative, Technology and Society

Fedora Upgrade Woes

5 Comments

OK, so I followed Pete’s advice, and tried an upgrade from Core 7 to Core 8 via yum (yes, I know that Core 9 will be out shortly, but I figure it would probably be a mistake to go directly from 7 to 9, based on previous experience). Everything went fine until the end, when it failed with this message:

–> Processing Conflict: glibc-common conflicts glibc < 2.7 Error: No Package Matching glibc.i686 So, now what? [Evening update] OK, I ended up having to completely blow away glibc. Unsurprisingly, it broke my installation, with no obvious way to fix it. But it allowed me (finally) to do an ftp upgrade via a rescue CD. I'm now running FC8.

Administrative, Science And Society

Don’t Panic

C’mon, people, I appreciate the concern, really, but get a grip (or is that grippe?). It’s just the flu.

In most cases, you don’t need to see your doctor when you have a cold or the flu. However, if you have any of the symptoms below, seek medical advice.

  • A cold that lasts for more than 10 days
  • Earache or drainage from your ear
  • Severe pain in your face or forehead
  • Temperature above 102° F
  • Shortness of breath
  • Hoarseness, sore throat or a cough that won’t go away

Emphasis mine. The first five bullets never happened, the hoarseness lasted about three days last week, I never had much of a sore throat, and the cough is a lot better today (i.e., I didn’t do it much). I’ve got most of my energy back, and I think I’m mostly over it.

I think that there is a lot of wasted money in the health care system of people seeing doctors when there’s really not much that they can do. It also clogs up emergency rooms. It’s particularly bad when they bully them into prescribing antibiotics, which have no effect on a virus, and then they take half the course and quit, thus breeding more resistant bugs. I’m not the type to avoid a doctor if I need to see a doctor, but really folks, it’s just the flu.

Administrative, Science And Society

Don’t Panic

9 Comments

C’mon, people, I appreciate the concern, really, but get a grip (or is that grippe?). It’s just the flu.

In most cases, you don’t need to see your doctor when you have a cold or the flu. However, if you have any of the symptoms below, seek medical advice.

  • A cold that lasts for more than 10 days
  • Earache or drainage from your ear
  • Severe pain in your face or forehead
  • Temperature above 102° F
  • Shortness of breath
  • Hoarseness, sore throat or a cough that won’t go away

Emphasis mine. The first five bullets never happened, the hoarseness lasted about three days last week, I never had much of a sore throat, and the cough is a lot better today (i.e., I didn’t do it much). I’ve got most of my energy back, and I think I’m mostly over it.

I think that there is a lot of wasted money in the health care system of people seeing doctors when there’s really not much that they can do. It also clogs up emergency rooms. It’s particularly bad when they bully them into prescribing antibiotics, which have no effect on a virus, and then they take half the course and quit, thus breeding more resistant bugs. I’m not the type to avoid a doctor if I need to see a doctor, but really folks, it’s just the flu.