stoutfellow

Fall semester begins next Monday. I didn't get as much done this summer as I'd hoped, but I did take care of a few things.

My new state ID card arrived last week. Unfortunately, Illinois IDs don't meet TSA's RealID standards; they'll still be accepted till October, but not after that, so I'm OK for Meg's celebration of life meetup next week, but I'll need to get a passport before my December trip to California.

My laptop began malfunctioning a few months ago. I didn't find time to take it in for a checkup until today; the people at Best Buy fiddled with it for a bit and voila, the malfunction went away. They gave me some suggestions on how to keep it from happening again, which should be easy enough to carry out.

My Master's student was away on family business for a couple of weeks, but she's back now and we've resumed meeting. We'll have to work out our fall schedule soon.

I absolutely must get some new clothes this week. I'm down to 2.5 passable pairs of pants, which means laundry every three days. Not good.

Where'd I leave that harness?

I can understand websites whose income is ad-generated, blocking people who are using ad blockers.

I can understand websites which ask people with ad blockers to whitelist them, or take other compensatory steps.

I cannot understand a website which asks you to whitelist them *without checking whether you've already done so*. (The button reads "already whitelisted or declining to do so".)

I just got one of those malicious phone calls, where they tell you that your computer has been compromised and you need to call them about it Right. Now. I did not pick up, but let the answering machine take it, as per usual.

What is interesting is how Caller ID handled it: "Call from illegal scam."

On my old computer, I downloaded a PC app that could receive Kindle downloads on that computer. I need to get that on my new computer, but I don't remember where and how. Help?

The new library database project is advancing well. I've got one more data-entry form to code, and then three or four data-viewing forms; the latter will be much easier than the former. I spent much of the last two days wrestling with one particularly intricate (by my non-professional standards) bit of code. It wasn't behaving the way I wanted, and I kept throwing in more kludges to save it. I finally realized what was going on: I had one checkbox which was bound to a Yes/No field, and I was assuming that ticking the box would change the Yes/No value. Things are apparently a bit more complicated than that. I wound up coding the box to explicitly make the change in the form's recordset, and that cleared things up. (I removed the gubbage from the rest of the code afterward.)

I should have this thing ready to go sometime this week.
:fingers crossed:

Note: in the following, I am in no way boasting of my programming abilities. In the past, I've done a little programming using variants of C++, but not since IBM gave up on OS/2. (I liked that OS!) What I'm doing now involves MS Access and Access Basic - Tinker Toys, no more.

Anyway: after entering a few hundred books into my library database, I grew dissatisfied; I've begun a full revamp. (This is version 5.) Right now, I'm just plotting - working out the tables and forms I'm going to need. In some ways, this is the most fun part of the process - deciding just what I want to be able to do and how to do it most efficiently. (The limitations of Access Basic chafe occasionally, I'll admit.) Automate this process, make that information easily available on the fly, consolidate the other stuff so I won't have to enter it more than once - this is a fun challenge, and of a different kind than my workaday research.

I'm probably going to revamp my finances database too, but that can wait. I need to keep the old one around for the next while anyway, for tax and other purposes.

I don't have classes on Friday, so week one of the semester is over. A few items of possible interest:

1) I'm very fond of Geometer's Sketchpad; it and Mathematica are core components of my research. There are two copies of GSP on campus; one, on my office computer, was bought for me by the department, and the other is on the computer in one of the classrooms, bought by the university. The advanced geometry courses, which I almost always teach, are always put in that room. So, Monday, prepping for that evening's E/NE Geometry class, I put together a couple of GSP notebooks and copied them to the network, so I could access them from the classroom. When I arrived there, I discovered that GSP... wasn't on that computer. (This is the second time this has happened; when OIT reinstalls software on the university system, as they do periodically, sometimes they forget to put GSP back on that one.) I dashed off a message to the Chair; the next day his secretary came down on OIT, and by the next class meeting, GSP was again available.

2) The geometry class only has four students - it was almost cancelled because of that, but it's a required course for Math Ed and only offered once a year, so it survived - so I'm shifting from straight lecture to something more interactive. At least one of the four is really sharp, which is a good percentage.

3) After one class yesterday, one of my students caught up with me to say I sounded (to him) like Neil deGrasse Tyson - not in voice, but in cadences. I've never actually heard Tyson speak, but I'll take it as a compliment. I am aware that butter was involved, of course. After the Linear Algebra II class, one student said, "Dr. :name:, you're making my head spin! I took Linear Algebra I twelve or thirteen years ago...." I made some encouraging noises. (We're reviewing key material from LAI at a compression rate of about 4:1. Of course she's having trouble, being that out of practice!)

4) Progress continues on my research. The idea I came up with last week definitely doesn't work all the time, but I've verified that it works pretty often. That will probably go into the fourth paper in the sequence. (Still haven't put the finishing touches on the first paper....)

All in all, not a bad first week.

The story begins with a grooming appointment.

Gracie had already had her trip to the groomer, and it was Buster's turn. I picked up the phone and punched in the groomer's number. There was a dial tone, the familiar sequence of tones, and... nothing. I tried again. I got the number of another groomer; no good.

It occurred to me that I didn't remember receiving any phone calls for several days. (I get lots of phone calls. "CALL FROM UNAVAILABLE". Hey, buddy, if you're unavailable so am I.). I e-mailed my brother and asked him to call me, and to e-mail me if he couldn't get through. Sure enough....

I handled the grooming appointment by walking to the nearest groomer - a bit more expensive than my usual, but much closer - and making the appointment in person. (Buster looks much better; they even managed a semblance of a puppy-cut.) I also made a vet appointment (Gracie had picked up an ear infection) by giving the data to my brother and having him call the vet.

I don't really use the phone all that much, and I am still a champion-class procrastinator, so my efforts to resolve the situation were desultory. I fiddled with the phone; no dice. I downloaded the manual for the phone, but found nothing useful. I bought another phone and plugged it in to another jack; no luck. I made a mental note to, somehow, contact AT&T.

"I should call the plumber about the phone isn't working"
"I need to make another vet appointment the phone isn't working"
:sigh:

This morning, I finally figured out how to contact AT&T, initiating an online chat. After about half an hour, most of it consumed by the usual trivia, I was told that I had the wrong agent, and she would transfer me to someone who could help. We went through the trivia again, and I was eventually told that this was the wrong office, and I should call ###-###-####. I pointed out that this was impossible, and was given a URL instead.

I copy-pasted the URL to the address bar. I spent a few minutes ticking boxes and filling in forms, and was told that they could not process my ticket.

I returned to the page I'd been at before, clicked on a different button, and began another chat. After another round of trivia, the agent suggested that I reset the modem. (My phone was not, and never had been, connected to the modem, but wotthehell....) This, of course, broke the connection. I waited a few minutes for computer, router, and modem to make nice, and restarted the chat. New agent. More trivia. "Is the phone connected to the wall jack, or to the modem?" The wall jack. "Plug it into the modem." This I did, and voilà, I had a working phone again. I thanked the agent, gave him top marks on the Customer Satisfaction form, and disconnected. (I made another couple of tests to make sure all was well, and it was.)

I went over to my other phone, which was connected to a wall jack; its screen now says "Check phone line". I'm assuming that AT&T has cut off all of my wall jacks except for the one dedicated to the modem. Not sure I'm happy about that, but also not sure I care enough to kick up a fuss.

Gotta call the plumber tomorrow.

After posting grades last Monday, I spent the rest of the week loafing. (Well, I had to reply to a few students asking why they got the grades they got....) No cooking - just frozen dinners, sandwiches, and cereal. No trips to campus - I did connect to my office computer a couple of times, mainly to look up the grade spreadsheets. It was too rainy, most of the week, to walk the dogs.

However, loaf time is over. I may not be teaching this summer, but I do have a lot of things to do. I have to get a new passport; as of midyear, TSA won't be accepting Illinois state IDs. I have to put the finishing touches on Taxonomy I and submit it, and begin writing TII and outlining TIII (and maybe TIV). There's lots of housework that needs doing. I'm recording my library on the latest version of my library DB (and there's been a story or two I should tell, in that connection). I'm contemplating revamping my finances database yet again. I should also prep for my fall classes; two of them are courses I haven't taught in a while.

There is a big pot of arroz con queso cooking away, for this week's dinners. I want to start using my new stock pot, and to try out some more Indian and Middle Eastern recipes. The dogs need grooming (this week!) and visits to the vet, preparatory to their badly-needed dental work.

I've drawn up a (still incomplete) To Do List. I've done that before. The trick now will be carrying it out.

For several years now, I have been able to access my office computer from home. Recently, though, it stopped working; I'd click on one of the (series of) links involved, and the browser would just sit and spin.

Last week, the IT people announced that the system would be revamped to accommodate Windows 10 as of Tuesday night. Today, I finally got a chance to check it out.

If I go in using Firefox (my browser of choice), I can get in, but an annoying pop-up, asking permission to do such-and-such, makes three or four appearances, and the browser seems confused until the connection is completed. Likewise if I use Edge (which I'm trying to avoid).

You know which browser gets me in without any fuss? Internet Explorer.

Yeesh. I've put IE on the status bar, with the link to the office computer as home page. This is the only thing I'm going to use it for.