andrewhuey.org

Fragile Things

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:55:00 +0000

I noticed today that Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things is now available as a mass-market paperback. I've never gotten around to picking this up previously, so I went over to Amazon and took a look. The new paperback is $7.99. There's a Kindle edition for $9.59. And, strangely, there are six Selections from Fragile Things Kindle e-books for 99 cents each. I think that those contain the entire contents of the book, when you put them all together, but I'm not sure. I wonder what the thinking on that was. I probably think about these things too much.

Blogger FTP support going away

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:49:00 +0000

One very minor thing that's come up recently: Support for FTP publishing in Blogger is going away. Apparently, less than 1% of Blogger users publish via FTP. That's the method I've been using from the start, and I've just never changed. So now I'm going to have to. They're supposed to be releasing a conversion tool that will make it easy to switch to a Google Custom Domain, so I can keep the blog at andrewhuey.org, but I might have to do some finagling to redirect andrewhuey.org to blog.andrewhuey.org or something like that.

On a practical basis, it shouldn't be a big deal. On a philosophical basis, though, I'm wondering if I want to do this. Right now, all my content is stored at Google, of course, but published as HTML files under my 1&1 account. I can back them up easily, and if I ever decide to stop using Blogger, they don't go away -- I can keep my archives right where they are. If I switch to "custom domain" publishing, then my fqdn (say, blog.andrewhuey.org) will just point to Google's servers, and I need to rely on them to serve up the content. They *do* have export tools that can supposedly give me a snapshot of my entire blog, so I could then import it elsewhere, so maybe there's no practical problem with this. It just bothers me a bit that all my content will be in a database at Google and not fully under my control.

I may switch to WordPress. My host, 1&1, has the necessary support for WordPress (basically, PHP and MySQL), so I can install that, and have my blog completely under my control. All the data will be in a MySQL database that I can back up whenever I want, the logic will all be running on my own site, and I can pick it up and move it to another host whenever I want. And I guess another nice philosophical point is that WordPress is open source, so it won't matter if WordPress as a company goes away; I'll still have the code, running on my own site.

Of course, with everything that's going on right now, I'll probably just take the path of least resistance and go with the Google "custom domain" thing.

ramblings

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:03:00 +0000

I don't usually get too personal on this blog. It's usually just tech stuff and comic book stuff and random silliness. But I feel like I need to get some stuff out of my head and on to "paper" today. (I should warn you that you should skip reading this, if you're not in the mood for maudlin.)

My dad died at the end of September, and my mom passed away on Monday of this week. After my dad passed, I was so busy taking care of my mom (or at least *trying* to take care of her) that I never really had enough time to process Dad's death. And of course I spent most of this week handling the arrangements for my mom, so again, I haven't had time to think about things much. Now though, the immediate details are all taken care of, and I find myself with a few spare moments here in my apartment, with nothing much that really needs doing right away. So now, I'm thinking.

I've realized that it's Friday night. I used to call my dad almost every Friday night. For a while, I was calling at right around 7:30 every Friday. I tried to avoid calling during Jeopardy, since that would usually result in Mom yelling at Dad, because he was talking too loud and she couldn't hear Jeopardy. So I'd wait until 7:30 to call. Sometimes, we'd just have a short call, going over anything that came up during the week, or talking about whatever holiday or birthday might be coming up and whether I was coming down, and what we'd do. At one point, we'd fallen into the habit of having pretty long phone conversations -- about a half-hour usually. (My dad had a tendency to ramble.) I used to look forward to these calls. I know that some people don't like calling their parents, but I genuinely liked talking to my dad, most of the time. Talking to Dad was a good way to unwind after a hectic week. I'd look forward to opening a bottle of beer and giving him a call. I'm just now realizing that I'm not going to have any more of those calls.

And I'm thinking about holidays too. Mom was always good about decorating the house (whether it was in Whiting or back in Roselle Park) for Easter and Christmas. Nothing elaborate or fancy; she just had a bunch of knick-knacks and stuff that she'd pull out of the closet and put around the house. I'd gone down to the house in Whiting for every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter (and most other holidays) since they moved down there. We'd usually make a lasagna, maybe cook a small turkey, or something like that. The last couple of years, as Mom and Dad had both been having increasing trouble with their eyes, we'd scaled back a bit, and had actually gotten take-out a few times on holidays. But we still got together and hung out, even if it was just the three of us, having Thai food. There were a few years, when my brother Pat was still alive, where he and Heather would come down too, and maybe one or two people from Heather's family might drop by, and one or two neighbors would come by, and we'd have a nice group of 5 or 6 or 7 people over. That was always fun.

I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do on holidays from now on. Back when I thought Mom would hang in there for another 2 or 3 years, I anticipated that I'd probably go over to assisted living, and maybe take Mom out to dinner on holidays, or at least hang out with her for awhile if she wasn't up to going out. Now, I'm thinking that maybe I'll do some traveling around the holidays. Maybe I'll go down to Atlanta and visit my brother Mike. Or maybe I'll go into NYC on Thanksgiving, and see the parade. I guess I can do whatever I want now. I don't have any family obligations at all. It feels pretty weird. Looking ahead, I think I'll get through Easter easily enough. Maybe I'll go to mass, then just come back home and relax. Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be hard though. I was joking with somebody a while ago about doing a Jewish Christmas next year -- hit a Jewish deli for lunch, then see a movie, then Chinese for dinner. I may actually do that. Or maybe I'll go to mass at a big church in NYC and make a day of that. Or find a volunteer opportunity somewhere, maybe with the Salvation Army or something.

One other thing I've now realized that I've lost forever: Dad would often tell me, if I was complaining about work, or fretting about losing my job, that I could always move back in with him and Mom, if things got too bad. While I've always had a decent job, and more than enough money to pay my rent, it was a nice feeling to know that, if things got too bad, I could always move in to the spare room in Whiting for a while. It wasn't just a monetary thing -- if, maybe, I got really sick, or got seriously injured, or had a nervous breakdown or something, I knew there was a place I could go where they'd take me in, no question.

On a practical basis, I've been on my own for many years now. I've always had enough money to pay all my bills. I paid for my last car in cash. And I've got enough money stashed away to survive a couple of years of unemployment if I ever have to. I haven't really *relied* on my parents for anything. But it was good to know that they were there if I needed them.

OK, so this post has really just been a bunch of clich�d self-pity. Everybody loses their parents. And it's not uncommon to lose both of them in short succession. So, I'm not special in this. But it still hurts, and it's still helpful to organize these thoughts and write them down. If you didn't enjoy reading this, then feel free to forget all about it, and head over to The Onion and have a few laughs.

my Mom

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:56:00 +0000

My mom passed away today. Rather than reiterate what I just posted to Facebook, I'll just put a link here.

Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:17:00 +0000

router trouble

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:30:00 +0000

I seem to have more trouble with routers and wireless access points than I should. My first WAP was an original Airport (flying saucer model). I think I was actually still on dial-up when I got that, and had it plugged into a phone line. It worked fine for a couple of years, then just died. I replaced that with an Airport Express, used in conjunction with a Linksys router. The router was fine, but the the Airport Express started flaking out at some point. I found that I could use it at work with no problems, so I took it into work and got a Linksys WRT54G for home, and used that to replace both the old Linksys router and the Airport Express.
In the office, the Airport Express was fine for a while, until it got fried from a power surge. I replaced it with a D-Link WBR-2310 that I got off Woot. That worked fine for me up until we got kicked out of our building a couple of weeks back. (I'm now working from home.)
Back at home, the Linksys WRT54G worked fine, until I got an Apple TV a year ago. It just didn't work right with that. I replaced the firmware with DD-WRT and tweaked a few parameters, and I got it working acceptably, though it was still a problem to copy large files from my desktop computer down to the Apple TV.
Well, the WRT54G died last week. No clue why; it just stopped working. Since I'm working from home now, I really need a working router, so I hooked up the D-Link that I'd been using in the office. It's been a bit flaky. I've made a bunch of config changes, so we'll see if it holds up today or not. If not, I'm thinking about one of these two routers. They both should accept the DD-WRT firmware, and have some good reviews out there.
I think my frequent router issues probably have something to do with the variety of equipment I've got hooked up, and the density of WAPs in my apartment building. I've got a Tivo, Apple TV, PS3, iPod Touch, PSP, Wii, and three notebook computers sharing my wireless. And I've got maybe a dozen other wireless access points that I can see from my apartment.

Spike Jones - How Much Spike Loved Live TV

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:07:00 +0000

I think my prior post may have been a bit maudlin, so here's a nice Spike Jones clip. (My Dad was a big Spike Jones fan, and so am I.)

weirdest Christmas ever

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:33:00 +0000

I realized yesterday that I've spent every Christmas of my life so far with my parents. I always came home from college for Christmas break. After college, I've always driven to my folks' house, either back in Roselle Park or down in Whiting, for Christmas.

I did drive over to my Mom's assisted living facility this morning and spend a little time with her, but she's not really in a condition where it would make sense to take her home with me for the day, or take her out to dinner or anything. She had a minor fall this morning, and is a bit unsteady on her feet right now, so I don't think it would be a good idea to take her out and risk another fall.

So I'm spending most of the day alone here in my apartment, watching MythBusters, and taking care of a few miscellaneous chores. I've been trying to think of something I could do today to honor Dad. I think maybe just relaxing today, and continuing to be responsible about taking care of Mom, would make him happy.

If anyone reading this is feeling any charitable impulses today, consider the Alzheimer's Association. They've been quite helpful over the last few months, as I tried to figure out what was going on with Mom, and how best to deal with it.

one day at a time

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:19:00 +0000

The last few months have been... eventful. That's the best word I can think of for it. My dad was in the hospital from the end of August until the end of September, when he passed away. I spent a lot of time in October starting to settle Dad's estate, and doing a lot of stuff for Mom. At the beginning of November, I found out that the company I work for was not going to make it out of Chapter 11, and my entire staff was laid off. Right after Thanksgiving, I moved Mom from her home in Ocean County to an assisted living facility here in Somerset County. After only a few days there, she wound up in the hospital. She got a pacemaker, and some adjustments to her medications, and went back to assisted living in about a week. Her dementia seemed to get a lot worse while she was in the hospital though. They discovered that she had a C. Diff. infection, and started treating that. She's a bit better now, but still not back to "normal". Meanwhile, at work, we got kicked out of our building at the end of last week. We were bought by a larger company, and all our servers are in Michigan now, and I'm working out of my home, mostly.

I still have a lot of work in front of me, with regard to making sure Mom is OK and taken care of, Dad's estate getting settled, keeping my old company's systems running for a little longer, and trying to help the new company take over all of our operations.

Sometimes I feel sorry for myself, but I try to remember that I do still have a job, unlike many of my friends, and, due to my Dad's diligence and thriftiness, I should be more than able to pay Mom's assisted living bills.

I have no idea what 2010 will bring, but my mantra right now is "one day at a time."

assisted living

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:42:00 +0000

I stumbled across the site for the Mature Market Institute today. They do an annual market survey on costs for assisted living, nursing homes, and stuff like that. It's no surprise that the Bridgewater NJ area is one of the most expensive in the country for assisted living. The national average is $3131 monthly. Wilmington, DE is the most expensive, at $5219. Bridgewater NJ is $4354. I'm paying more than that for Mom, since she's in an Alzheimer's unit, and requires a pretty high level of care. I've got a claim open on her long-term care insurance, but I haven't gotten an answer from them yet, so I'm paying for Mom's care out of Dad's retirement savings right now.

There are a bunch of other interesting (and sometimes useful) papers on their site. There are a couple on "discovering what matters" that look like they might be worth reading. And there's a caregiver's guide for Alzheimer's Disease that has some good info in it.

This site is run by MetLife, so I'm guessing that there may be a certain bias on certain subjects, but everything I've read there so far seems reasonable.

Windows XP Mode

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:55:00 +0000

I'm installing Windows XP Mode on my Windows 7 laptop right now. It's taking quite a while, but I guess what it's doing under the covers is installing Windows XP under Virtual PC.

Oh, hey, it just started up Windows XP. Now it's going through all the normal annoying things you get on a new XP machine, the warning about unused icons on your desktop, the warning about not having any anti-virus software, and all that.

Okay, so I played around with it a bit and it looks like your usual Windows XP virtual machine, only with a few differences. There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to shut the machine down; you can only log off and hibernate it. And there's a fixed user that is automatically logged in. I guess I don't know much about Windows XP Mode yet. I'll have to play with it some more.

Snow Leopard

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:29:00 +0000

Windows Live Sync finally works on Snow Leopard. As does the SonicWall NetExtender VPN client, if you follow the instructions at this page. Lotus Notes 8.5.1 works a bit better than 8.5 did under Snow Leopard, but it's still not perfect. So, I've now got everything I need running on the Mac under OS X 10.6, though Notes still needs some work.

Mom

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:56:00 +0000

I've mentioned previously that my Mom is suffering from dementia, and I'm looking to get her into assisted living. I just thought I'd post a couple of useful links for anyone in a similar situation. First, there's a paper titled Understanding the Dementia Experience [PDF] that I found quite helpful in trying to understand what my Mom is going through. And I've started reading a book called Long-Term Care: How to Plan & Pay for It that seems to be a pretty good book, though I haven't gotten too far through it yet. I have to say that my Dad did a great job in preparing for this, since he bought long-term care insurance for my Mom several years ago. The LTC insurance should help us out a lot.

WIndows 7 upgrade - Inspiron

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:00:00 +0000

There was a huge bombshell dropped at work yesterday, which I may blog about in a week or two after it's all sorted out. And things are still going on with my Mom, which I may or may not blog more about at some point. Somehow, I found time to install Windows 7 on my Dell Inspiron while all this stuff was going on, and I'm going to blog about that, since it's a lot more straightforward than any of the work or family stuff.

I used Easy Transfer (as mentioned previously) to back up my stuff, then did a clean install of Win 7, then used Easy Transfer to put the data back, then re-installed all my applications. This went pretty well. Most of the apps found their data, no problem. The one exception was Lotus Notes, which kept its data under the Program Files folder, so Easy Transfer didn't save it. No big deal, though, since I had a fairly plain Notes install on this laptop, so it was easy to just go through the setup again.

So now I've got the 64-bit version of Win 7 Pro running on my laptop, with the usual tools installed -- Office 2007, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, Notes 8.5.1, and a bunch of other random stuff. Everything seems to be working, though I haven't really tested everything yet.

Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:13:00 +0000

I've been so busy with family stuff, that I haven't even thought about upgrading any of my machines to Windows 7. I had planned to upgrade my desktop machine and my Inspiron laptop to Win 7 Pro, and my Acer netbook to Win 7 Home. My copy of Win 7 Home hasn't shown up in the mail yet, so I can't do that one yet. And the desktop machine is too important for me to mess with it right now.

So, I'm playing with the Inspiron tonight. It had Vista Ultimate, 32-bit, on it. I'm replacing that with Win 7 Pro, 64-bit. I used Windows Easy Transfer to save my files and settings from the old install to an external drive. I got through the basic Win 7 install fine, and now I'm restoring those files backed up with Easy Transfer. Assuming that works out, then I've got about a dozen programs to install.

I do wish that there had been a reasonable in-place upgrade option to get me from Vista Ultimate to 7 Pro. Even if I had to stick with 32-bit, that would have been fine. Or if there was a way to migrate installed programs along with the files via Easy Transfer. Well, I guess it's not a huge deal. I'm just hoping it's all worth it. I never really had time to play with the Win 7 betas or RC or even the RTM off MSDN, so I don't have much of a clue as to how it'll work out. People keep saying that it's a lot better than Vista, but I have my doubts!

assisted living in NJ

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:21:00 +0000

If you're considering assisted living for someone in NJ, please read this. I haven't been blogging much since my Dad passed away, largely because I'm trying to spend as much time as possible with my Mom, while also settling Dad's estate, and trying to figure out what I need to do for Mom in the long term. I'm thinking that my Mom is ready for assisted living, but the costs involved are pretty scary. She does have long-term care insurance, but there's a max payout on that, so it'll run out if Mom lives long enough. And Dad had a fair amount of savings, but, again, assisted living costs could drain those savings. I'm hoping that, if that happens, I'll be able to transition Mom over to Medicaid, and just pay for her room & board myself. I hope I can manage to choose a facility that will do right by us, and not try and kick Mom out if she has to go on Medicaid. It's a lot of responsibility, and a lot to work out.

my father

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:26:00 +0000

I haven't been posting anything lately, because my father, Chester Huey, has been in the hospital for the past few weeks. Early yesterday morning, he passed away. I usually don't post a lot of personal stuff on this blog, but just in case anyone's reading this, and they knew my father, but haven't heard yet, I thought I'd post some information here. We will have viewing hours for him at Manchester Memorial Funeral Home in Whiting NJ on Wednesday 9/30, probably from 2-4 pm and 7-9 pm. He will be interred at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Memorial Cemetery in Wrightstown NJ, probably on Monday 10/5. We're still finalizing things.

I've been working on an obituary of sorts that I may eventually post here. I owe my Dad a lot -- for everything from buying us a TRS-80 and giving me my first exposure to computers, to introducing me to George Orwell's Animal Farm ("Four legs good, two legs bad").

Windows 2008 - File Server Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:23:00 +0000

At work, I've been gradually setting up a new machine to act as our main file server, print server, and domain controller. The old server is running Windows Server 2003; the new one will be running Windows Server 2008. I haven't really done much Windows sysadmin work lately other than the usual day-to-day stuff, so I'm a bit rusty on AD forests, FSMOs, and stuff like that. I have a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to write up and post, but I haven't had much time for that. I thought I'd mention one thing that I discovered today, though: the Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit. I just stumbled across this at random, but it seems to be exactly the tool I need to get my shares moved over from the old server to the new one!

Snow Leopard

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

I have a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to write up and post, but I just haven't had a chance to do it. For now, just a couple of observations on Snow Leopard, since I upgraded my MacBook on Friday. The upgrade was smooth. I've got two semi-important programs that don't work anymore though: Windows Live Sync and SonicWall NetExtender. I'm hopeful that both will be updated, but I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile, on the list of stuff that *does* work, there are a few oddball programs I use that are working fine: KeePassX, Lotus Notes 8.5, and Missing Sync all work. I *think* Fusion and TechTool Pro work, but I haven't really tried anything crazy in either of those yet.

annoying detours

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:58:00 +0000

Just found out that my usual route to work will be blocked off for "a few months." I knew they were doing this, but I was hoping it would just be for a week or two. Joy.

Talmadge Avenue Bridge Reconstruction over the Middle Brook, Township of Bridgewater/Borough of Bound Brook. Beginning Friday, August 14th a detour will go into effect for this bridge as work continues. Eastbound traffic will continue to use the temporary bridge but must turn left onto Tea Street. Talmadge Ave. will be closed at this bridge. The posted detour will direct traffic to Union Ave. (Route 28), to Mountain Ave. back to Main Street. The posted detour will direct westbound traffic onto Mountain Avenue to Union Avenue to Tea Street back to East Main Street. This detour will remain in effect for a few months.

comic-con

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:25:00 +0000

Since I didn't get to Comic-Con this year, I bought an events guide and souvenir book from someone on eBay. The package showed up today, and I just finished going through the events guide. Reading through it was strangely relaxing. Not quite as good as actually *going to* the con, but, with a little imagination, it felt a little like I was in my hotel room on Wednesday night, after getting back from Preview Night, planning out the rest of the weekend.

Notes 8.5 FP 1 and a weird shortcut key

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:35:00 +0000

Notes 8.5 fix pack 1 is out. I've downloaded it and applied it to a few machines. It does seem to fix a few random problems with the initial 8.5 release.

I haven't applied Domino FP1 to our server yet though. I need to wait for the weekend to do that. I haven't had a lot of problems with 8.5, overall. I've had a few issues with SMSDOM crashing occasionally. I'm on the most recent version; I upgraded SMSDOM right before I upgraded Domino itself. I'm not sure if I should blame this problem on IBM or Symantec. I also upgraded Backup Exec on the Domino server recently. That seems to be working OK, though the Backup Exec Domino agent isn't yet certified to work on 8.5. The Backup Exec upgrade was a pretty big jump, since we'd been running version 10. There isn't a way to directly upgrade from 10 to 12.5, so I just uninstalled 10 and did a fresh install of 12.5, then re-created my daily backup job.

As I side note, I discovered a weird shortcut today. Hold down Ctrl+Alt while you're going into your inbox, and you'll load the "non-java" version, basically the same thing you get if you run Notes in basic mode. I picked this up from a forum post written by Mary Beth Raven. I'm not sure how useful this is to anybody, but for some reason, I think it's kind of cool.

revised AutoHotKey script

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:23:00 +0000

A couple of weeks back, I posted a semi-useful AutoHotKey script, just a little script to paste text from the clipboard, but stripped of formatting. Well, I did some searching, and of course, I'm not the only person to have come up with this basic script. This guy posted a similar script, a couple of years ago. The one thing I learned from his script, which I somehow didn't think of myself, is that, rather than sending the clipboard contents using "SendInput", it's better to put the text *back* on the clipboard, then send ctrl-V. The reason this works better is that, in most applications, a paste is an atomic operation that's easily undoable, whereas using SendInput appears to the application as though you just manually typed out the contents of the clipboard.
I also decided to disable the macro in Excel, since I have an existing macro in Excel that's mapped to ctrl-shift-V, and I don't want to override that. So, bottom line, the macro now looks like this:

#IfWinNotActive Microsoft Excel 
^+V::
myStr := clipboard
myStr := RegExReplace(myStr, "\s+$","")
clipboard := %myStr%
Send ^V

Still nothing terribly amazing, but very useful, and something I was living without for longer that I should have.

NYAF

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:33:00 +0000

I bought my 3-day pass for New York Anime Festival today. I went last year, and enjoyed it, though I didn't really buy much or spend that much time at the con. I think I just went in for a couple of hours on Saturday. This year, I bought a three-day pass, and I plan on taking Friday off from work, so I should be able to spend more time at the con. I'm still so far behind in watching my accumulation of anime DVDs, and reading my accumulation of manga paperbacks, that I probably won't buy much again this year. But, I'm hoping to just hang out, relax, and avoid thinking about work for the weekend. How's that for a plan?

post-SDCC wrap-up

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:22:00 +0000

CBR has a nice post-con wrap-up article, interviewing David Glanzer. It's hard to imagine how much work goes into Comic-Con. I'm still reading articles on io9, CBR, and elsewhere, catching up on stuff from the con. (Imagine how far behind I'd be on con news if I'd actually *gone* to the con?)