Quote of Interest

Been busy with the start of classes, came crossed a quote in my physics book, and some of you know how much I enjoy a juicy quote!

"At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past." - Count Maurice Maeterlinck "Our Social Duty"

Modern Computing: Forget a New OS, Just Patch Endlessly!

Every once in awhile, usually once a year, I format my current desktop, in an attempt to clear out the clutter, and get things running smoother. Of course I back up pertinent files, but more often than not, what is backed up is a great deal less than what gets trashed. With Fall semester starting this Thursday for me, I figured what better time than the present to get the maintenance out of the way.

Having now completed that task, I have found that I am absolutely astounded by how much of one's hard drive is being occupied by critical Microsoft updates. Most of us think little of it when our auto-updater flashes the news every morning that during the night Microsoft updated or added "critical" files to our system. Only when we tear the build down to bare bones do we actually get an accurate picture of just how much that has come to amount to.

My hard drive on this computer is 80 gig. Of which the actual operating system occupies 5.5 gig. SO prior to patching my hard drive is around 74.5 gig. Here is the kicker. Now having patched in each and every update that Microsoft screams is "critical," and combining this with a 10 gig partitioned System Restore cache, my hard drive is now sitting at 61.0 gig. Naked. What is wrong with this picture I ask you? The OS is 5.5 gig.... and the updates to make a modern and functional PC are 3.5 gig. ! What the hell is Microsoft doing with all that money? Certainly not R&D. Will we see a volume of patches amounting to triple the size of the original OS, prior to the official release of the *new* yet amazingly ancient OS they have in the works?

It boggles the mind.

Tags: Hard Drive, Microsoft, OS, R&D, Updates

Clear Lake '06 part II

Sunday morning, we all woke up fairly early, and with a little cajoling and subterfuge, managed to trick Timmy into exiting his slumber and joining the living. After breakfast we headed to the Thunderbay River Canoe Livery for a morning of canoing. Despite it being described as a "moderately paced" river, it is extremely snaky with basically very few straight-aways. Due to a drought the area has been experiencing, the river was little more than a foot deep in many spots. This caused a lot of the trees along the banks to have fallen inward, as well as many spots where the canoe would completely bottom out, forcing us to jump into the river and pull it forward. There was no shortage of obstacles, and on several occasions we slammed into tree branches and logs that were just an inch from the surface. As Stacy put it "this is the scraggliest river ever," and as one of the other canoers we saw that day described "this river is treacherous!" Overall, we had an absolute blast! Rising to the challenge we paddled, pushed, pulled, and clawed our way down stream. Considering how wet we all got, it is good that we did not bring the digital camera, and so, I do not have any pictures to share of this adventure.

Afterwards we returned to the campsite and the kids were dying to go swimming. At the lake we all enjoyed a nice soak and swim. Later we decided to take a hike on the other side of M-33 in search of an elusive gravel pit that we had marked on a map, but that the campground's gate employee was totally unable to give us any indication of where the trail head was. So we wandered aimlessly for some time, before deciding to head back for supper, with the kids belly-aching that they were going to die from hunger. Tim & Amie were not as surprised at us eating veggie burgers and tofurkey soy dogs as I had imagined they would be prior. After dinner we sat around the fire for awhile, before returning to the beach for another glimpse at seeing a few meteors. However Sunday night a storm was rolling in, so we were not able to stargaze for very long.

Monday morning we awoke to rain. Tim and crew had reacted to it sooner because they were tenting. We exited the camper to find all their gear piled up under the awning as they scrambled to tear down the tent. After they had packed up with what seemed like record efficiency and speed, we had breakfast, and they began their drive home. (Lainey attends Holt schools, and so has classes year round, her mother said it was ok for her to miss school Monday in order to be able to camp with us, but that she needed to be home early).

After they had left, the three of us decided to pack a lunch and go exploring for an abandoned mining town that was marked on our map. Though we did not end up finding it, we still had a splendid hike. No sooner had we stumbled upon Elk droppings on the blue blaze trail, than we heard a clacking of antlers against a tree and a low huffy grunt, warning us that he was there, and he knew where we were. Although we did not catch a direct view of him, it was pretty exhilarating just knowing he was right there that close to us. Monday afternoon felt very much like Fall. In fact we saw quite a few red and yellow leaves along the trail. For those of you in lower Michigan, words of warning; get your Summer activities in while you can because it is already Autumn just 230 miles North of you!! After our family hike, it was back for another swim. This time we didn't stay long. The air and water were bitter cold. We returned to camp and bundled up in pants and sweatshirts.

We relaxed around the fire reading for the remainder of Monday. Come Tuesday, we awoke, had a bite to eat, and began packing up. We have become pretty quick about it by now, as we have had a ton of practice over the years. Just as we were about to leave, we had our final misadventure. It seems the threaded steel cable that connects to the winch, and is used to crank the pop-up camper open and closed, had deteriorated into pure rust, and as a result had all it could take and decided to snap. Fortunately we were all packed, and everything was closed up and it broke on the way down while we were shutting it. On the way home Stacy pointed out that... had we opened the camper up prior to the trip, yes we would have avoided "the ant" mishap, but that the cable would have broken while the camper was still in our driveway, and we would not have been able to use it this trip at all! Her logic was somewhat comforting, but to be honest, I am getting very fed up with all the problems and extra time and responsibility the camper adds, and am looking forward to using a tent the next time we camp.

Tags: Canoing, Summer, Thunder Bay Canoe Livery

Clear Lake '06 part I

The Johnson family is now home, having returned from a four day adventure to Clear Lake State Park, situated midway between Atlanta and Onaway in the scenic upper-lower peninsula of Michigan. This time, my brother Timmy, his wife Amie, and his daughter Lainey joined us for a couple of the days.

It was at times, a series of interesting obstacles, yet remained very fun. We started out loading up early Saturday morning, and found that the bag that runs the length of the roof of the pop-up camper had two wasp nests underneath it. After a fruitless search for RAID, I was ready to attack the nests with naught but a broom and a Xena-esque "Aie aie aie yieeeee...!" Fortunately a wiser head prevailed, and Stacy opted to don the full body armor consisting of sweatsuit, ski mask and thick winter gloves. She deftly scraped the nests off the camper into a bucket, using a cookie sheet. She then took them to the back edge of our yard and released them near the compost bin, with nary a sting. Bah, druids.

With that small obstacle out of the way, we were off. The drive was uneventful, and we were there in around 3.5 hours. The campsites themselves were enormous! So big in fact, that our power cord did not reach from the camper to the box. Though an extension