More Monster Madness

Neverbeenkissed is really going through a very negative, selfish stage - so she went out last night, the third time in the row without telling anyone. Sneaked out through the garden gate. At 1 in the morning, noisy girly chatter from waiting car driven by some one with a lead foot. I knew it was her... the entire house has been locked in. I was obliged to let her in, and felt it in my cultural calling to give her a lecture. So today, I decided to make a list of unresponsive things she has done. My challenge is: you claim you broke up with your Russian bf, well how do you expect people to respect you when you don't show some respect.

1. coming in at 1am with loud music in the car and stupid giggling waking up neighbours
2. not telling parents about outing and forcing them to get up by tapping loudly on the door
3. doing laundry at 1.15am because you needed your favourite pants the next day
4. 10am drying pants in dryer and leaving the house WITHOUT said favourite pants when the sun is shining
5. forcing mum to buy bra because "I desperately need it" and dumping it into the laundry bin with price tag intact. It's been there for 4 days now
6. freshly folded clothes dumped on bedroom floor waiting for clean up day when freshly laundered folded clothes go back into laundry bin to be washed. I think these clothes have gone from one wash to another and have actually never been worn

NVU testing

I find logging-in a very annoying task - I am sure it's psychological but I dont see why it's so difficult to just make notes without revealing my identity and password. So I'm going to try and use NVU to update the post. It's an open-source WYSIWYG editing software. Not sure if it works - so ghibberish may follow.

I know blogger has an MS Word plugin but I have this thing against MS word as well

Letter to my daughter, 19

14 January 2008, Monday

I started this post because today, my daughter and I decided to kill one another. Before anyone gets all excited and start to reporting me, it's not kill as in Bill. This is a figurative speech to announce the most difficult time of the mother-daughter relationship.

She is 19. Neverbeenkissed has now kissed, had sex, had 2 boyfriends, been dumped by one, given an ipod by the other, and just 2 minutes ago, she chucked her laptop into the rubbish bin. I must say the Thinkpad is a very hardy machine. The bin thing was only a last resort. She wanted to smash it to bits but failing only to dislodge the "e" key after several hurlings, she thought the bin was the next best dramatic thing to do. I was glad because I thought she was going to hurl it at me.

We didnt fight - there had bee silence for a couple of hours. She was quietly reading, Series of Unfortunate Events, a book she received like half a decade ago. The pages were still stuck from years under piles of other unread books.

In the morning, we had a fight because she burnt the toast. 10 years of making toasts and she still burns it. She had been gone 2 days and was really pissed off with me when I messaged her boyfriend, the ipod guy. I only did this because her phone was unresponsive. And I know it's not a thing to do but I had the intention of embarrassing her because she didn't keep her promise. It has always been that way. Totally ignorant of her responsibilities.

Now she has finished school. She is not sure what she wants to do. She is supposed to get some letters into college. She didn't get any. Normally by this time of the night, she'd be on the phone. It's been silent.

She says "you and I don't talk". It's true. I stopped communicating with her years ago because I find her too pig headed. Maybe because I don't like her. Do I not like my daughter? Where have I gone wrong?

(to be continued)

How to make a Monster

This is an exhibition about the art and technology of animatronics from a Queensland company specialising in animatronics for Hollywood. Their credits include Inspector Gadget 2, George of the Jungle 2 and a few others. This is one big showreel. It's interesting nonetheless to see how with a lot of plasticine, silicon and fibreglass you can create really cool monsters and with wheels, cables, bolts and joints, make these animals come alive. A worthwhile exhibition for Sunday at Scienceworks.

Getting to the exhibition was a real pain because it's school holidays and parking was a problematic. After a couple of hours of pulling levers to make the fake animals and monsters come to live, we had our fill. Plus Mad Animator's mind was now full of ideas and he wanted to go to his friend's place to play with other inanimate objects like the computer.

As we headed towards the parking lot, I saw a ball of fluttering feathers. A little sparrow unable to lift its head from the ground. Its right wing was fluttering endlessly, like a clockwork toy that's come up against an obstacle. For the sparrow though, it looked like it was making rings around the tarred surface of the parking lot. I knew something was broken, but it couldn't be fixed with wires, cables or silicon. I picked it up from the tarred surface. If it was going to die, best be on a flower bed. We moved onto the car. As we drove past, the bird had somehow fluttered its way back to the gravel. Cars drove past precariously close. Another sparrow kept it company. Again I picked it up and tucked it deeper onto the flower bed. I drove off - checking through the rearview mirror that it hasn't flutterred back to the road.

And now, whenever I think of animatronics, I see the image of a little sparrow, broken, but still fluttering for life against the canvas of a roughly tarred surface that is the parking lot.

Shut Up Mum

Never Been Kissed is growing up horribly. Yesterday, the school rang - she has lost her work experience at the multimedia place because she was caught chatting on Myspace during work time. I tried to talk to her nicely this evening. "Shut up mum!" - venom spewing.

I walked away.

Yesterday after the news I wrote down something to give to her. I held onto it.

You are nearly an adult. It is time for serious thinking.

Everyday, when you wake up, say this:

I am doing something today. Is it going to help me become a better person?


She will never get this message.

Old PC I and II

We have joined the club of people who have too many PCs but refuse to put them in the dumpster bandwagon. .. my PCs join my collection of mobile phones except that it's rather difficult to hang them up on the wall, within a nice frame.

What to do with the old PCs?

The first one, a Pentium (R) with 90MHz processor and 32mb RAM I got when we first came to Australia.

The second one I picked up from the nature strip last hardware disposal day. I also picked up a monitor and a keyboard.

To plan for a super computer, I bought a used monitor and another keyboard for $8 at this PC shop in Vermont South

So I really don't have an excuse not to get them going.

PC II has 2 hard drives and I fiddled so much with the BIOS, the system won't recognise an operating system. Someone left an essay on the Korean War in the pickedup PC. That's at least worth something, and reason enough to revive the HDD.

To be continued.

17 May 2007, Thursday
OK, continued. Yay. I got it running. Here's the story.

My old PC (OPC) has only 75MHZ and 24MB Ram. It has a Gigabyte GA 586AP Award Modular Bios v4.50G. Bios ID: 2A5KBG02-00 Chipset ALi 1449/51/61

So what I did was dug around and found the SIMM ram and plonked them on. Now it's a whopper - nearly 90MB Ram.

Then I decided to plonk in the Ethernet Card Intel Pro 100S - but then I'd have to run a cable from the router to the PC which meant I would need at least 20m of RJ45 cable. Off I went yesterday to Carribbean Gardens. The nice guy and I had a chat. He was selling a PCI USB 2(2 port) card for $10 whereas a 20m CAT5e would cost me $12. I got thinking. I got the card.

Last night, fiddled around for awhile reading up about USB for Windows 95.

I must express thanks to www.usbman.com - lots of insights about installing USB drives on that old OS. http://www.usbman.com/Win95%20USB%20Guide.htm

First thing: make sure your version of windows can take USB. Minimum Windows95B or specifcially 4.00.950B (4.03.1212.1214).

First thing, I was advised: flash bios. Bios is too old probably to be upgraded. I thought about it all the while. Got sidetracked. Most advice is to go on Windows98, but try finding that OS. Then I tried the other Linux distros. Even my ancient can't accept Linux. Sighed. Went ahead anyway. Took the advice, and downloaded the following files: install the USBSUPP.exe file first, reboot and install the other. Don't worry if windows has a question mark next to some devices.

USBSUPP.zip
USBUPD2.zip

Those two files will get Windows 95 to recognise the USB controller. Next, to get it to recognise Flash drives, you have to install this file:

w95usbflash11.zip
from this site: http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerwin95.html
as directed by Annoyances. org

zing. I am on usb. Only problem, it doesn't have that thing on the tool bar that allows me to stop the usb device. Just have to pull it out or shut down.

Objective:
Install extra hard disk from PC (2) and try out my Linksys Wireless Adapter (USB).

Joost

It's all a hype
Until I got my invite
but what misery
my PC hasn't the memory

Anyone wants a Joost invite?

Mad Animator's Powerpoint

So he is given 5 weeks to produce a Powerpoint presentation on Technology. His chosen topic is the light bulb (incandescent light bulb). He thinks PP is utterly boring. I think he has been zinged. Afterall the fancy hypercams, flash animations, and his own claymation projects, this Powerpoint presentation does look rather primitive. How to inspire him?

Road to OS

This is with regards to the old laptop. The Twinhead 9000T. Fabrication date: pre 1997. 120Mhz, 32mb ram and nearly a gig of hard disk space. Haven't really checked the specs because it depresses me how fast time has flown and how over-taken I am by technology. I clearly remember how excited I was that it had 32mb Ram!

So I am trying to figure out what to do with this laptop that is in good working condition, except for the touchpad (synaptics) which I suspect I had fried when I tried to install a Wacom mini drawing pad.

So now I want it to go fast. I am thinking of using this as a kitchen laptop ie. a dedicated web browswer. In my previous attempts, I couldnt install Firefox, or the latest IE because the thing was still running Windows 95. So now looking at what OS would be kind to an old laptop.

Reading FreeDos. I've decided to give Linux a skip because Linux has overdone itself by trying to follow the Windows trail. In MHO, it is trying so hard to one-up Windows with a graphical environment that there's nearly no diff now between Linux and Windows.

I am seriously generalising of course since I am no Linux expert - and I know not all the distributions there are. But I have tried to install Suse, DSL and RedHat to no avail. The library has a copy of an old RedHat (Dummies guide) but the accompanying CD were lost years ago.

Just rambling.

What I Plan - DVD to Old TV

Objective: Plug in high tech DVD to old tech one RF input TV.

Found out that it is do-able but it's a 50/50 thing.

Old TV has combined AV signals into one RF (Antenna) socket.

DVD has split different AV signals so the alternative is to plug DVD via VCR which then combines AV into one RF out.

DVD players have copyright circuitry which means that it may not output correctly resulting in poor picture quality or no picture at all.

Solution: buy a AV (RF) modulator. At Dick Smith it's about $40. At Jaycar the set alone is $20 but it has no power source, and with another power source, I'm looking at total $37.

But I am not going to get a new TV. That defeats the whole purpose

UPDATE :22 APRIL , SUNDAY
So yesterday I went to Dick Smith to check out modulators and found DVD players on sale. I decided to buy a Teac DVD player for $69. It had the latest playable things: include MP4 and WMA. The assistant told me the more "no name" brands, the less the problem of copyright circuitry.

Got it home, connected Audio to Sony Hi-Fi (circa 1990) and connected to National VCR (circa ? at least pre-1990) and connected RF out to Trinitron RF/Antenna In. Switched to AV channel and beaut! Worked like a charm. Needless to say the DVD player doubles as a CD player for my MP3.

This morning, though, the screen decided to show an error message: !PSCAN, with the screen split down the middle.

Finally discovered that the DVD player is doing some kind of progressive scan which my old TV cannot cope with. So went to Settings, selected Video and selected Interlaced, rather than PSCAN. Beaut take 2!

She Threw a Chair at me

So this is about Never Been Kissed. Last night I told her that if she wanted to prepare her folio, the first thing she'd need to do is to practise drawing. I said "I dont ever see you drawing" ... she flew into a rage, and shouted "Why are you and my teachers always putting me DOWN!"... THEN she threw a chair at me. Actually, she was looking for something to throw and the closest thing was a steel backed chair right before her eyes. She has a lot of strength. She picked it up and chucked it on the floor but instead chucked it at me. The back of the steel chair hit the back of my left hand. It bruised a vein. The fingers hurt like hell. Mad Animator got so mad, he took the next closest thing, a cleaning brush and he followed her to her room and wanted to bash her with it. I stopped him before the violence escalated. Muscle salt cream work rather well on bruised veins.

What I Plan

To do today, tomorrow, next week, next month.

• find a way to attach DVD/VCR combo unit to old Sony Trinitron TV with only one UHF outlet
• Put Linux onto old laptop
• Clean up old toasting oven so that Mad Animator can use it to cook his fimo
• Install ABC Amber and reg key so that I can back up my emails
• 
  

Why they took the computer away

It was a dark Thursday, Maundy Thursday, eve of Good Friday.  She was going to be alone in the house. She had a plan: get into a place where she is forbidden.  So as soon as I left the house, she launched into her father’s desktop and logged into MSN Chat. And that was how we lost our computer.

She said she chatted with only her friends. Friends, for a 17 year old, is a very broad definition. A friend of a friend of a friend is a friend. So this friend of friend of etc. came online. He chatted. He confessed he loved her, wanted to see her. He lived round the corner. “Round the corner”  is a also a very broad definition.  They’ve met before. In summer, at the milkbar, round the corner.  She said no at first. We had records of that chat. Then she finally relented. Gave her address !!!!!  He came round.  And being a silly teenager, she said they could talk in the room. What was she thinking?!  That’s what everyone asked: the police, the counsellor, the mother, the father, the brother.... “What were you thinking?”  Apparently, she thinketh not.   So the boy advanced. She pushed him away. She closed the door. He forced it open. He touched her breast. She yelled. But no one hears your screams in the suburbs.  He unzipped his pants and masturbated in front of her. She closed her eyes. Then he left. “Please don’t tell anyone about this” he said.

She told everyone.

She rang me. I freaked out. I thought the worst. I rang the police. They thought the worst. They turned up. They rang the Sexual Abuse Centre. They thought the worst.  They arranged for an appointment the next day.... Good Friday.

When all the words had been printed in black and white, it wasn’t the worst. As the Police said, this was a “successful outcome”.  But..... the Detective came round. He wanted her to press charges. He took fingerprints, he took her clothes, he examined the ground, and he took our computer away.

Several months have passed.

The computer is still away... we don’t know if it’ll ever come back.  We got another barebone system.

She is still chatting. But she’s no longer a purple fairy princess. She wants her room to be black and her fashion style, punk.

PK Aware

PKWare is a compression and extraction utility for Windows AND for DOS.

I used PKWARE 2.5 for DOS which can be downloaded as a self-extracting file from PKWARE... it’s free if it’s for non commercial use.

The Manual is in amhryic...

You will save the utility in a floppy.

Now run it from the floppy by typing this after the C:\> a:
when you get to a:\> type in this

pk250dos.exe -d c:\pkware

this copies the program to a directory name pkware which it will create automatically for you.

Now, the juggling part.  Modify the AUTOEXEC. BAT

WHAT?!!!!

My DOS is basic. So can’t do nothing.  So I did this:

c:\>path
path =

So there was nothing in my path, so I typed the following:

c:\>path=C:\;C:\DOS;C:\PKWARE

then I got the hell out of there.

Reboot.

Now go to the directory where I want to compress and SPAN my diskettes...

c:\windows\mydocs\stupid>

and I typed in

c:\windows\mydocs\stupid\pkzip a:zipfile -&f –rp

where a:zipfile is the name of the zip file you want to store in the floppy

All the files in the Stupid folder will then be compressed and stored in various floppies.

Just stay awake.... the program will prompt you to change diskettes. It helps to number them as you go.... The prog formats the diskettes for you.

Then when it’s all done, take the LAST diskette, go to the working computer (mine is running on XP with Winzip) and extract onto the hard – disk.

Job done.

Opening More Dos

Forgot to mention that in dos, you will see subdirectories which are usually coated in [] so a directory will have subdirectories (also known as folders) which look like this
[stupid]  [idiot]

so if you type
c:\windows\mydocs\cd stupid
c:\windows\mydocs\stupid>dir/w

you will find all the stupid jokes you had archived.... which can be big files... and this brings me to PKWARE

Opening DOS

This is DOS for real emergencies, like when the registry is so messed up there’s nothing much to do except format the whole hard disk. But there’s info you need to retrieve.  So, I taught myself DOS.  

How to get into it.

Powerup the computer... and while it’s working its way around, like within the first 2 seconds press f2, or delete, or whatever it is is necessary until the whole computer goes quiet and this thing stares at you from the black screen

C:\>

This is Dos.  First thing to note is to pay attention to the \ and the >
The former tells you where you are, the latter asks you where you want to go. That’s my take anyway. Dos is not case sensitive, so any case will do.

C is your hardrive.  To see what’s in it type
DIR
which will be followed by a strong shower of letters which you can’t read. To control the shower, type
DIR/W    (OR)
DIR/P

There will be names of files and folders and subdirectories... to go to subdirectories or folders, type eg. windows

c:\>cd windows

This tells Dos to go into the directory (cd) windows which will lead you to

c:\windows>

see the > comes after windows which means “Now that you’re in windows, where do you want to go today?”  

Imagine you have a directory called mydocs then type

c:\windows>cd mydocs

which will lead you to

c:\windows\mydocs>

type in dir/w (OR dir/p) to see what’s in it.  Suppose there’s a file called blog.txt then and you want to read it, then type

c:\windows\mydocs\type blog.txt

but before you press enter, stand by the PAUSE key ‘cos another verbal shower awaits you. If you don’t press PAUSE you won’t read a thing.

To go back one level on directory type

c:\windows\mydocs\cd..

to go back to root directory, type

c:\windows\mydocs\cd\

which will take you back to

c:\>

Here are some commands.  

Copy blog.txt to a: drive

c:\windows\mydocs\copy blog.txt a:

Delete blog.txt

c:\windows\mydocs\del blog.txt

The objective here is to save files, so you probably want to practise the COPY command. If your files are too big, then use PKZIP for DOS.  But don’t expect me to teach you anything, cos’ I’m still learning.

Useful DOS site:
http://dos.rsvs.net/index1.htm

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jchap/
(check out his Dos tutorial)

http://www.jegsworks.com/Lessons/index.html
(Look under Dos basics section)

    

In 55 minutes

In 55 minutes, the year will be over and all the brouhaha will start. Have to remember to date cheques as 2006.  I have just opened a dozen oyters, panfried prawns in onions, tomato and olive oil, steamed a kilo’s worth of clams and now settling with a cold Californian Rose out in the deck. It’s been a hot day. 42 degC... the house still steams. My neighbour John has organised a three piece jazz band. The music is cool. The air outside the deck is purer, cooler... I write this on my laptop by candlelight. Something dichomtomous about this, but heck... not going to think about it too much.

So ... hello. Theres a very cold sparkling shiraz waiting for me and a non-vintage Chandon in the fridge. The kids have been told they’ll be eating next year (and hence begin all the “next year” jokes).  I’ve worked hard, but not worked proud.  Maybe next year.  

This Beringer Rose is rather appetizing. Going to have a shower and at some point in time, eat drink and be merry.... and also swat some mosquitoes.

Digress 2

3 more days to Christmas, 2 more days to Christmas eve. 2 more episodes to write. I got my plot written up but something’s missing, something is not feeling right. My heart is pumping rather fast. Must stop drinking coffee. A storm is breaking ... no, make that a storm broke.  I can see the light. Who left the toilet light on?!!!!

Never Been Kissed

Friday is the day. My daughter meets this guy somewhere in an inner suburb. “He’s going to teach me how to kiss”.  So what? Is it one of those demonstrations you do with a mirror or with the palm of your hand. “Oh man!  He’s showing me with his lips” . So he’s actually going to kiss her. Euyewwww!   If you want to kiss someone, you must make sure you have clean teeth and drink lots of water. “I’ve never been kissed before... and I know I’m a bad kisser”. The important thing is to have clean and fresh breath.  I fear ... for the guy. My daughter is not known to brush her teeth. “You don’t mind?”  Of course not.! “Cool!  and oh...by the way, he’s a Goth”.    That’s fine I said.  And oh... let me tell you about herpes....

I Know What you did last Sunday

It was rainy. The sun popped up to say hello. I was driving. I needed coffee. Sunday in Caulfield is pretty quiet. Caulfield is a jewish ghetto. You’d think there would be a decent cafe latte the first day of the week. No way.  Macdonald’s was on the wrong side of the street. I did a right, drop the daughter at Helenslea Drive, did a U and ordered a large latte at Maccas’s.   Wrong move. Should have ordered small. Proceeded to Clayton where my son plays with the Greek soccer team. He’s no greek, but a great midfielder Then headed back to Caulfield, picked up Hannah and went back home.  That was 4 days ago.... today I asked my daughter what we did on Sunday. She couldn’t recall. “I stayed home” – why??  Then it all came flowing back. There was no guilt. There was the usual defensive  “How do I know??!!! That was AGES ago!”  You can figure she’s a teennager.  You can’t imagine how close she came to be physically maimed for life.  

Anyway, this blog is for a friend whom I know is reading because she’s a blog reader and she needs regular sex.  But hey... who am I to comment. A good blog is hard to find.

So how did it all flow for my daughter?  How did she suddenly remember what she did last Sunday?  I must say it was a stroke of brilliance. I told her to start using her brain to take pictures. Picture it and all will be revealed.

Tesla, one of my most admired inventors of the 20th century could imagine his inventions.  My heart bleeds for Tesla because he actually invented the radio but didn’t get round to the patent office fast enough (probably didn’t have the dough) and that Marconi dared to lay claim to the fame.  If there’s one person you’ve not discovered in your life and should know more, may I recommend Tesla.  He is googlable.

So what has it got to do with the blog-reading friend?  Same-o same-o. Picture it. Imagine yourself. Do  a walter mitty.... all will be revealed.  The best things happen to people who see it in their minds.  I am sure, for my daughter, she is re-living Sunday in Caulflield and how on the following Wednesday evening, a flying frying pan - launched by a parent,  missed her head by 2 centimetres.