LukPac.org

Eww

2008-06-23T21:01:00.001-05:00

Current promo on CNN.com:

A T.V. exclusive! Christina Aguilera rocks the vote and talks about her new baby with Larry King! Wednesday, 9 p.m. ET

Methinks the editor that wrote that should be reassigned.

HS baseball weirdness and more contacts

2008-06-10T13:25:00.003-05:00

I could never figure out why everybody talked about spring baseball around here, when Park always played during the summer. Finally, an answer:

Prep baseball has two seasons in Wisconsin � spring and summer. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), Iowa is the only other state in the nation to offer summer baseball.

The spring season begins in late March and runs through the second week of June. The summer season typically begins the fourth week of May and goes until the final week of July.

Interesting...

I've been playing the contacts game again. I've had rigid gas permeable contacts since 1993, and my pair is actually from 1993 or 1994. A few years ago I noticed my eyes were pretty red and during my yearly checkup my current eye doctor agreed to try some things to reduce the redness. He is a big fan of soft contacts, and while I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of switching, I agreed to try them. We tried 3 or 4 different pairs, but my vision wasn't as good, and my eyes were still a bit red with some of them. After giving up with that, we tried some different RGP designs, but those had problems too. Eventually we ended up with a pair that was supposed to be identical to the pair I already had, but I still wasn't comfortable with those and ended up just wearing my old pair.

Fast forward to my yearly appointment a month or two ago. We tried a bunch of different soft contacts again, but again with no success. Right now I'm trying some different RGP's again, and while my vision is mostly fine, my eyes seem to be just as red or worse. I wish I knew what the heck was going on.

I have some water for Eddie Money

2008-06-09T13:36:00.002-05:00

I like rain. A lot. I like the sound of it falling, I like the muted look it gives things, and sometimes I even like being out in it. I love thunderstorms.

I don't like when it tries to get into my house.

Sunday morning it was pouring, so I went out and took a look at how things were holding up. There was quite a bit of water pouring over the gutter on one side of the house, so after it stopped and cleared up a bit, I went up and cleaned that out. So far so good. I've never been happy with the downspouts, though, so after a trip to Home Depot, I started to rebuild them using PVC. Of course, it started to rain about then, so I only got two of the four done.

Then it started to rain *harder*. My PVC contraption wasn't quite working how I wanted it to, and that nasty thing called gravity was channeling a good bit of the water right to the corner of the house. With no shirt on and it coming down even harder, I went out to move the pipes around. Problem temporarily solved.

Unfortunately, ponds were still forming in various places around the house. Eventually some water started to seep in from under and around the stairs. Nothing compared to some of the disasters at the old house, but still enough to make a good sized puddle. It didn't create too much of a disaster, but now I have to figure out how to get under the stairs and have Basement Systems come out to look at things.

I did manage to get the lawn mowed on Saturday before the big rains started, thankfully.

2008-06-06T22:25:00.003-05:00

Blah - somehow I managed to get sick. Wednesday night I started getting drainage down my throat, and for the past couple days I've been blowing a lot and have generally felt out of it. Today was a little better than yesterday, but I stayed home both days. Hopefully I perk up soon.

Last week was my Little Rock trip. Pretty whirlwind, but it was still nice to get away. I just wish airlines designed their planes for 6'6" folks. Anyway, I took a bunch of photos which are here.

The lawn is a hayfield. Who wants to come mow?

2008-05-27T13:08:00.003-05:00

Busy weekend. Yesterday I cleaned out the garage again - a car can once again fit inside. Barely. I also got some parts back on the snow blower that had been off when I was working on it. Unfortunately, while it started and ran the first time I tried, I couldn't get it to stay running a few hours later. Maybe I'll take another look in the fall...

I thought I'd ping TDS about WiMAX since I had not heard anything new. I got this:

I had our WiMAX team look into your question about expanding WiMAX in the Lakeside St. area. According to the team, that area is not up for immediate expansion, but because of your inquiry, they are now looking at it.

I guess nobody thought to "look at it" when I was calling them daily about DSL and phone problems.

Oh - a family of robins built a nest on the light for back yard. The hungry babies are very cute.

2008-05-19T12:39:00.002-05:00

As of yesterday, I'm now officially an Internet developer. Well, I received the Internet Developer Certificate from MATC, anyway. I'm still going to take one more class in the program in the fall, but hopefully this should help with my future endeavors.

Yesterday I took some chicken out for dinner, but didn't really know how I wanted to cook it. On a whim I decided I would try to pan fry it, which turned out amazingly well. I just sprinkled on some BBQ rub, dredged the pieces in flour (with a little salt and pepper mixed in) and fried in canola oil, about 6 minutes each side. I guess I did something right, because it was juicy, tasty and crispy. Even the piece I reheated in the microwave today for lunch was good. Add another page to Luke's cookbook.

I'm flying down to Little Rock for a night at the end of the month for work. Long story short, somebody needs to personally deliver a hard drive back to Madison, and since I'm working on the project, I was given the chance to go. I won't have much time to bum around, but I figured it is some place I've never been, it's a few days off of work, and it's free, so I really couldn't go wrong.

2008-05-05T20:15:00.003-05:00

That was a well-plotted piece of non-claptrap that never made me want to retch.

It has come to my attention that the entire series of MacGyver is now available for viewing online. I've watched a few episodes so far, and well, it's a little more corny than I remember it being when I was a kid. That said, it's still kind of fun to see Mac get himself out of the jams he gets himself into. And considering I didn't start watching it originally until a few seasons in, I've got some catching up to do.

Classic corny Pete quote: "What is MacGyver *doing*?!"

2008-04-25T10:18:00.002-05:00

This morning was the first this year I saw green on the trees driving down the street. Hallelujah!

2008-04-14T10:23:00.003-05:00

It looks like maybe spring has finally sprung. Most of the remaining snow is gone, and any that has come down recently hasn't accumulated. Plants are popping up. I even raked the front yard. A little warmer and some green and I'll be happy.

There honestly hasn't been much going on lately. My biggest excitement around the house recently was putting up some shades in the porch that had been sitting in the basement. Those should help keep it a little cooler in the summer.

For those geeky types, it looks like the U-verse infrastructure is being up in Madison. I'm more interested in TDS expanding their WiMAX coverage, though.

2008-03-21T21:34:00.002-05:00

Ok, when I said "I want spring", I didn't mean for a few days, only to be replaced with even more snow.

A few weekends ago I finally put up the curtain tie-backs that had been sitting around for about two years. Now to work on the dining room walls...

Also a few weekends ago I picked up a pair of Dynaco A-25 speakers on a whim from St. Vincent de Paul. They cost a bit more than something you'd typically find there, but I had read good things about them, and I've been really happy with them. They're in pretty good shape and don't sound "dated" at all (having been originally released in 1969). Very natural sounding...

I want spring.

2008-03-08T08:28:00.002-06:00

I suppose it's never too late for something to go wrong, but it seems things have finally wrapped up with TDS. The phone number got switched over to the new line and the old line was disconnected without disconnecting the new one in the process. The DSL still isn't ideal, but it's better than it's ever been, which is something.

I took the kids to the park twice last weekend. It was the first time in a long time, and they had a blast. They were *really* tired after the second time.

I want spring.

2008-02-06T21:23:00.000-06:00

Amazingly, since my last post, the downstream speed on the DSL has shot up nearly 300 kbps, making it faster than I've ever seen it. Let's hope (again) nothing screws that up.

Did I mention I'm sick of winter? Today was no "couple of inches here and there". No, apparently today we got over a foot of snow. Right now I'm bowing down to the snow blower gods. After running for a few seconds and dying, and then not wanting to start at all, the snow blower started and ran for the next hour and a half straight. I managed to clear the driveway, the sidewalk, the walk to the front door, and 4 other driveway aprons. I guess somebody was smiling on me.

2008-02-04T21:28:00.000-06:00

Hopefully things with TDS are winding down. Things were set to 4 meg today, and while the download speed is only a hair faster than it was at 2 meg (due to the distance), the upload speed is quite a bit faster. Currently things are about the best they've ever been. So next up is getting the phone number moved to this line and then disconnecting the old line. And hopefully not disconnecting this line in the process (again). I really just want all of this over.

I'm really sick of winter. It's been nice a few times, but not long enough to melt much snow. And rather than a few big dumpings, it seems we get a couple of inches here and there. Which means more shoveling. I want to be able to walk inside without tracking in snow and salt.

Worried about Freckles. She's had a sore on her arm that she keeps licking, which just makes it worse. Putting a bandage on it usually just creates more problems. The other day I put a cone on her. I really hope it is going to start looking better soon.

2008-02-02T08:31:00.000-06:00

It seems like while many of the folks at TDS are incompetent, they aren't jerks. The person I just talked to was the exception.

After the initial shock of being bounced around yesterday, I realized that if I was setup in the billing system at 2 meg, the DSL help desk would be able to set it at that if I called. So I called, explained everything, and was put on hold. While on hold, I started to refresh the stats page on the modem. First I saw the download speed up over 2 meg. Good. Then it dropped a bit. Then more. Then the upload speed went way down.

The guy gets back on the line. "Ok sir, I have it all set for you. I saw some errors so I set it at 1.5 meg for you."

Long story short, I asked him to please set it to the full 2 meg, but was told "you don't want me to do that". After explaining that, yes, I've been down this road before and yes, I really did want him to do that, he finally changed it. On the download side. Had to ask again to get him to change it on the upload side. Which of course was met with more rudeness. And when it was all said and done, he essentially just hung up on me.

So anyway, it is at 2400/576 kbps (down/up) for the moment, which is pretty good. It looks like that is close to the limit for download, while there's plenty of headroom left for upload once they adjust the speed. We'll see what happens on Monday.

2008-02-01T18:44:00.000-06:00

Several people have said I should write a book about this. Anyone know a good publisher?

The TDS saga continues. After much delay, I was told on Monday that the new line would be going in that day. Great. AT&T was out to install it, but when I tried it, it was completely dead - no dial tone or DSL. Shortly thereafter I got a call from TDS repair indicating they knew there was a problem (surprise!) and that somebody would be dispatched on Tuesday.

Monday night I left two notes on the phone box outside, one labeled "TDS" and one labeled "AT&T". They explained the problem and requested that I be called when they were out.

Tuesday afternoon - one letter gone, no call, and line still doesn't work.

Wednesday afternoon - second letter gone (later found in the snow in front of the house), no call, dial tone now working but no DSL. The main line was down for a while, making me worried that they were working on that instead of the second line.

Thursday - AT&T dispatched again. The guy was still there when I got home from work, so I asked him what was going on. After telling me "everything looks fine", I asked him what line he was out to work on. Turns out he was dispatched to look at the main line, not the (new) second line. "But it looks like there's a dispatch for that other line tomorrow". Ugh.

Friday - Left a message with my supervisor in the morning. Came home over lunch, still no DSL. On the way back to work I got a call from customer care: "your new line is installed and working". "I was just home and the DSL still doesn't work" I say. "Can you go back home and call the DSL help desk? They will have to fix the problem from here". Rather than fight, I called my supervisor again when I got back to work. She was busy with somebody at her desk, so she said she'd call me right back. She did, and it turned out when they set up the new line, they never set it up for DSL. "I'm talking to two people about it now, and they should have that up and running soon".

Got home and the DSL was indeed up and running. Except the speed was set at the 1 meg limit, while it should have been set at 4. First, a call to repair:

"Oh, the help desk will have to change that for you, let me transfer you".

Then, the DSL help desk:

"Well, you're set at 2 meg".
"No, I'm not. I can see it is set exactly at the 1 meg limit".
"But we don't offer 1 meg service".
"I've had 1 meg service before and this is the exact same speed!"

After trying to further explain the situation, he got a person from customer care on the line.

"Sorry, sir, if the line was set up through repair they will have to be the ones to fix it".

I got transferred *back* to repair and got a supervisor. My confidence level with him was not very high, however, after telling me "I'll go talk to them tomorrow about it" and "We'll see how things are on Monday".

Unbelievable.

I should really keep my mouth shut until they finally get things set correctly, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've got a bit more "headroom" at this speed than I did the last time they had me set this way, so I'm hoping that once they set it back to 4 meg it will be even a bit faster than it was before. As with anything TDS, though, I'm not holding my breath.

2008-01-26T11:12:00.000-06:00

TDS finally made the official announcement about WiMAX, but alas, there's currently no coverage on the south side. Still keeping my fingers crossed, though:

TDS has six towers in all, located on the east and west sides of the city. If you live within two miles of one of those towers, you may be able to get TDS WiMAX. Roughly 55,000 residential customers and 10,000 business customers will be able to get WiMAX service initially.

During 2008 we will be working to expand WiMAX to a much wider geographic area and fill in the gaps on the south side of Madison. We are also working with additional Dane County communities to bring WiMAX to those locations.

Unfortunately, it seems as if these plans are anything but concrete, based on my query to their PR contact.

In other news, I've been down in Arizona since Wednesday visiting Zach and Katie. Unlike the last time I was here, it has been fairly nice out; I think the temperatures have been in the mid-50s to the mid-60s. That is to say, actually conducive to doing things. So far Zach and I have gone on a hike, checked out some botanical gardens and gone on a ~20 mile bike ride. Some photos here. Oh, and playing Rock Band.

2008-01-19T15:20:00.000-06:00

To add insult to injury, so far TDS has sent two letters indicating they are going to disconnect service, and left a message on the machine with instructions to call their financial services department. Funny how when they want money (that isn't even owed to them) it's a big deal, but when your service is out or significantly screwed up, they don't want to be bothered.

It looks like AT&T has a remote building about a block and a half away (which would in theory mean really fast DSL), but I don't like other aspects of their service, and as much as I hate dealing with TDS, I think I want to deal with AT&T even less.

2008-01-16T13:54:00.000-06:00

Ugh, still fighting with TDS. I realize the holidays are a bad time to get anything done, but pretty much nothing has happened since before Christmas. They were going to look into wireless, and at one point I was being told "the tower is up, they are just working through some issues, all of Madison is going wireless", but the latest word is "you're too far away and there are no plans for wireless in your area". Son of a b****.

So now they are planning on putting in another line (again), although today I was told that due to new rate plans, that is going to require a 2 year contract. That is, of course, if the new line is actually better, which may not actually be the case. And even if nothing changes, a new contract would still be required for the new rate plans, which cost a bit less than the current one.

On top of all that, they didn't issue the credits they were supposed to, so the latest bill was a mess, with charges from the second line (which were never supposed to be there in the first place), charges from the first line (which were supposed to be taken off when they disconnected it), and late charges. That should have been all taken care of as of about 10 minutes ago, but I won't believe it until the next bill comes.

My tummy is upset.

2008-01-12T22:04:00.000-06:00

An aural history of Luke's childhood, part 2:

Side 1
Forever Young - Rod Stewart
(94 WKTI)
Angle Eyes - Jeff Healey Band
Hungry Eyes - Eric Carmen
Just Like Jesse James - Cher
Another Day in Paradise - Phil Collins (cuts off)

Side 2
Rock and a Hard Place - Rolling Stones
Rock Wit'cha - Bobby Brown
When The Night Comes - Joe Cocker
We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel (cuts off)

A bit later this time (1989) and a short tape. I think everything was pretty recognizable except the Bobby Brown and Cher songs. I remember WKTI using "Another Day in Paradise" for some homeless promo, and they'd play so much of the song before the voice over you'd get tricked into thinking they were actually playing the song. And I liked "We Didn't Start The Fire" a bit too much back then.

In another year or so I'd be listening to the oldies station.

2008-01-06T18:50:00.000-06:00

Here's a piece of history, kids. Back in the day I used to tape songs off the radio with my Sears Lxi boom box. Amazingly enough, I still have a bunch of them. I just finished listening to one the whole way through, and this is what's on it:

Side 1
Motortown - The Kane Gang
(94 WKTI)
I Think We're Alone Now - Tiffany
(94 WKTI/John Harrison)
I've Been In Love Before - Cutting Crew
(94 WKTI)
Lost in Emotion - Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam
(94 WKTI)
Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams (cuts off)
Mony Mony - Billy Idol
(WKTI/John Harrison)
Rock Steady - The Whispers (cuts off)
The Finer Things - Steve Winwood
(close up on Countdown USA)
Every Breath You Take - The Police
The Final Countdown - Europe

Side 2
Land Of Confusion - Genesis (small clip)
Big Time - Peter Gabriel
(100 WRKR)
We're Ready - Boston
(Hit Radio 100/Sledgehammer clip)
Will You Still Love Me? - Chicago
You Make Loving Fun - Fleetwood Mac (first second only)
I Want A New Drug - Huey Lewis and the News
Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen (first few seconds)
We're Ready - Boston
(100 WRKR)
Jacob's Ladder - Huey Lewis and the News
Is This Love - Survivor
(100 WRKR/Run to You clip)
I Need Your Loving - Human League
(Hit Radio 100 WRKR w/ John Gibson)
We Built This City - Starship (cuts off/end of tape)

The first bunch of songs is from WKTI in Milwaukee and seems to be from November 1987 or so. Starting with The Finer Things, though, all of the songs seem to be a bit older - perhaps 1986 or early 1987. Funny, as I remember most of those more. I guess I liked We're Ready a lot!

2008-01-02T09:57:00.000-06:00

So here we are in 2008. I'm failing to come up with any insight or wisdom for this momentous occasion, but I did keep busy over the extended weekend:

Project: rebuild carburetor on snowblower
Status: complete, with a "but"
Details: Lately I've been having a problem where the snow blower starts fine, but dies after a minute or two. I suspected a fuel system problem, so I took the carburetor apart, cleaned it, and replaced a few parts. It might run a *little* longer now, but it is still dying after only a few minutes. Back to tinkering...

Project: install new bathroom exhaust fan
Status: complete
Details: The old exhaust fan looked like crap, was kind of loud, and didn't do the best job of getting rid of moisture from a shower. We bought a new (quieter, more powerful) one about a week ago, and the other day I finally got around to installing it. Despite a lot of swearing (insulation, cramped attic, trouble getting old fan out, no way to mount new fan) and at least one extended break, I got it installed, and it works better than expected. The mirror doesn't get steamed up anymore!

Project: get Cisco 831 router up and running
Status: complete!
Details: A few years ago I took a networking class at MATC and got a deal on a Cisco router. Basically just a broadband router on steroids, but I thought it would be good to tinker around with. A year or two ago I tried to get it up and running using the included web utility, but I couldn't actually get said utility to work, and then I started screwing around in IOS and couldn't even get to the web utility at all. Well, I have a need for it now, so I decided I was finally going to get it working. I restored web access via IOS, upgraded the web utility to something that actually works, and got everything up and running. Finally!

Project: replace garage door springs
Status: complete
Details: While working on the snow blower last week, the garage door suddenly came crashing down. One of the springs broke. On Saturday I got some new springs from Quality Hardware, made some adjustments to the door hardware and put the new springs in. Not only does the door no longer come crashing down, it works much better than before!

Unfortunately, I'm once again fighting with TDS. After getting things better than they had ever been, everything went to hell. One night the DSL simply stopped working, and I quickly discovered there was no dial tone either. Apparently when somebody went to disconnect the second line, they disconnected the primary line too. After two days it was back up, but instead of connecting at nearly 2.5 Mbps, it was now only 900 Kbps. It looks like when somebody went to reconnect things, they used the wires the second line was on, which aren't as good. I'm currently fighting "umm, we don't know what to do" with "you broke it, you figure it out and fix it". We'll see how that goes.

2007-12-25T14:07:00.000-06:00

Needless to say, TDS didn't leave things alone. More later.

I can't get enough of this:

2007-12-15T10:46:00.000-06:00

I'm not holding my breath, but it looks like TDS is finally ready to roll out WiMAX around here, nearly 2 years after it was first announced:

TDS will introduce its own version of wireless, high-speed Internet service in late January, said Dave Wittwer, president and chief executive of TDS Telecom and subsidiary TDS Metrocom, both based in Madison. And it will feature an advantage that's not currently available in the Madison area: upload speeds as fast as those for downloading data.

"I think it will clearly trump any speed in the marketplace today," Wittwer said.

The signal will be available primarily on the West and East sides, in areas not covered by Mad City's WiFi signal, TDS spokeswoman DeAnne Boegli said.

She said the service is meant for TDS customers who are outside the company's DSL territory. DSL signals travel over telephone lines but extend only about three miles from a switch.

I've been told there isn't yet a tower to serve this area, but that supposedly there should be soon. We'll see.

In related news, after yet more TDS incompetence, they finally processed the speed change order for the DSL. It doesn't seem to be any more error prone than before (which is why they kept *lowering* the speed), and now it's twice as fast. In fact, it's even faster than it was before this whole ordeal started in August. Here's hoping they just leave it alone.

Ok, time to finish up my homework for the semester.

2007-12-10T12:41:00.000-06:00

I guess it has been a while. Lately I just haven't been feeling very inspired. Homework has taken up a decent chunk of my time, along with stuff like dealing with snow and fixing the snow blower. Christmas is only a few weeks away, but I really haven't thought about it too much.

I suppose one recent minor miracle was I (hopefully) eliminated the spam registrations on FLO. The default CAPTCHA is essentially useless, as bots have learned how to read it. I was getting at least 10-20 bogus registrations a day. Since I upgraded on Friday I haven't had a single bogus registration. <keeps fingers crossed>

I've kind of given up trying to get anywhere with TDS. The second line was finally installed and was actually worse on most counts than the first one. The wireless service is *supposed* to be available by January, but I'm not holding my breath. For the moment I just told them to jack the speed up as high as they could and we'd see how that went, but that was 11 days ago and they still haven't done anything. I spent 43 minutes on the phone this morning trying to find out what was going on, finally to be told "it should be done by 5" tonight. As always, I'm not holding my breath.

The counter needs more work, but I don't have the energy to get into that now.

2007-11-12T22:35:00.000-06:00

I've been busy lately. The big news is I'm finally (mostly) done with the counter. I took a few days off work last week for an extended weekend and got the Mirror Coat on. Photos here. I still need to touch up a few spots, but that can wait for now.

Along with the counter I was busy with other stuff around the house - I put up a new light in the back hall (that has been sitting in a box for months) and put a window insulator kit up over the window in the back hall (which has been sitting in a box for a year). And lots of other little stuff here and there.

I need to clean the gutters one of these days...

Oh, I came across the instruction manual for my second boom box, which contained my first CD player. Not only my first CD player, but the first CD player in my whole family. I couldn't remember exactly when that was, but quite handily the receipt is attached - I got it for my birthday in 1992. It was a whopping $200 at the time. But it had digital tuning and detachable speakers! What was my first CD, you may ask? If my memory hasn't completely fogged up, it was Magical Mystery Tour, mainly because that was one of the few Beatles albums I didn't have in any form yet.