In Which We Brag About Our Petty Accomplishments

[ShottleBop]

I wiped the hard drive of an old Lenovo Ideapad, installed Ubuntu, opened a terminal, and entered command lines to reduce my swappiness from 60 to 10.

[ceptimus]

I got my old Eee PC going again and installed Leeenux this time (special small-disk-and-RAM-footprint version of Ubuntu). I think it's the best O.S. I've ever had on it - previously I'd tried Xandros, Win XP, Puppy Linux and another cut-down-Debian.

[Sock Puppet]

I got up on the roof yesterday and cleaned about an entire tree's worth of debris off of it. Not just the gutters; our roof has what's called a "hog valley" (between the original slope and the extra one that was added when they built the addition) that collects branches and pine needles, and after getting all that shit off, there was a respectable layer of friggin' soil underneath. Our yard doesn't have any big trees, but the neighbor on one side has this monstrous fir tree that dumps its crap all over our roof.

So that's prolly good for another six months, but if we have another frog-stranglin' monsoon, I'll have to check it out afterward.

[lisarea]

HAHAHAHA know what I've got?

A slightly used 1998 Krazy Kat kalendar, and 1998 calendars are reusable in 2015.

It does have some 1998 appointments and stuff written in it, but I probably won't accidentally do them. I hope. As I recall, most of them were pretty boring, and it would kind of suck if I accidentally went to some stupid 1998 work meeting and, like, actually have it be there.

[S.Vashti]

Does yours come with "with full-page cartoongs."?

[SharonDee]

Ooh, I get to make the first 2015 post in this thread!

Newsflash: I stopped saying I was gonna and actually did it. I have canceled all my cable TV channels, counting on the internet to provide my entertainment from now on. And even with the fastest speed available from my cable company, my bill is going to be just 1/3 of what it had been. Sweet!

[ShottleBop]

I rooted a phone for the first time, yesterday. Daughter gifted me her old Galaxy Nexus S (Sprint version). The device has 1 GB of space in the app partition, and just doing a factory reset and updating the Google apps used up all but a couple hundred MB of that. Phone couldn't do much, so I decided to try rooting it.

I tried to use the CyanogenMod "we do it all for you" rooting app, but, because the phone is the Sprint version, CM told me that I'd have to get my hands dirty. Well, at least CM had done the heavy lifting of unlocking and rooting my phone.

Couldn't get the Android SDK Studio to install under Windows 8 (personal laptop), so installed it on my work machine (Windows 7)--but when I tried to run "fastboot", the computer would open a command line, run whatever, and shut down the terminal before I could see what was going on. So I tried my "watching TV while surfing the 'Net" machine, which runs on Ubuntu. That worked--I could use fastboot to boot my phone into recovery mode.

I downloaded both an image file and a zip file with what I thought was the correct CM build for the phone. Couldn't move the image file to the same directory as fastboot, though, and didn't want to try parsing the instructions for inserting the proper directory(ies) into my path (which I used to find simple under DOS, but haven't had to mess with in a long time, and I confess to having difficulty with Linux directory-nesting conventions). So I went with zip.

First, my machine couldn't identify the command "sideload", so sideloading from a zip file on my hard drive was out. Then I couldn't get "push" to work to move the zip file to my phone. Putting my phone in USB mode, however, let me simply copy-and-paste the zip file to my phone. WHY DON'T THE INSTRUCTIONS MENTION THAT AS AN OPTION?

Then I tried to install the zipfile. The install aborted, with a Status 7 error message. I read up on that--usually means that you're trying to install a build that's wrong for your phone. Read online that, if you're sure the build is right for your phone, you can edit the updater file to remove the "assert" line at the beginning, and that lets the thing install. So I learned to use Leaf and how to zip back up the file. Tried that. It aborted, with a Status 0 message. Don't know what that means, but it kept me from installing the build I was trying to install--and, possibly, from bricking the phone.

Decided to try Paranoid Android. Downloaded the zip file that I thought was right, transferred it to the phone, and tried installing it. Another Status 7 error, but--with an explanation: The phone required a crespo4g flavor of Android. So I googled that, and found yet another version of CM (not the one that CM had told me was the right one) that DID install.

Then the reboot--and permanent CM boot image. I had done a cache wipe and factory reset before booting into the standard Android to copy over the zipfile for CM, but I hadn't done it before actually installing the CM. Googled the problem, and everyone seemed to say that, at that point, I had to reinstall a factory image using Heimdall (Linux/Mac alternate for Odin). So I installed Heimdall on my machine, and found, and downloaded, a zipfile that (I assume) was right.

Then, of course, you have to reboot into recovery mode. There are various sets of instructions for doing that for this phone, and NONE OF THEM WORKED. They all included "holding both Volume Up and Volume Down" while simultaneously pressing the power button (and, in some variations, the home button). Multiple tries, and multiple mocking, spinning CM logos. Finally, I try playing around, and: Volume Up + power button boots me into recovery--into CM's recovery. Hurray! I don't have to go back to factory stock ROM, I don't have to use Heimdall; I just have to wipe the cache and do a factory reset, and then I can reinstall the CM zipfile.

Yeah, this took several hours, while I should have been doing work, and I didn't even look up for the commercials that were running during the Superbowl (and I ended up watching only the last couple of plays), but I has puzzled out some nuts-and-bolts of Android and freed up a lot of memory in the phone.

Next step: to check out whether I can/how to partition my phone's memory to increase the app partition? This phone is totally for play, and I wouldn't mind sacrificing a GB or two of storage to give more room for apps.

[Janet]

I don't know if this counts as an accomplishment or blind luck. We want to go to Chicago for Memorial Day Weekend. My sister looked at the hotel I stayed in last weekend, but parking was $50 a night. I did a search in Expedia for hotels in the area with free parking and tried to book one. Got a message that the deal was no longer available. So I went to Hotwire, picked a hotel in that neighborhood with free parking for $90 a night less than the Expedia one and booked it. It was the exact same hotel. Result!

[specious_reasons]

My rank at Project Gutenberg is now at 4 digits. I only need to proof 5880 more pages to break into the top 100.

I've spent most of my effort proofing Anarchy and Anarchists. Communism, socialism, and nihilism in doctrine and in deed. The Chicago Haymarket conspiracy, and the detection and trial of the conspirators. It's interesting, and I may choose to read it once it's finally published.

[ShottleBop]

I did my taxes today.

[specious_reasons]

I just fixed my stereo. I've been putting off fixing this problem for weeks, because I thought the thing was dying, and I'd need to replace it, take it somewhere, or brush up on my ancient soldering skills.

I did it by blowing the dust out of the headphone jack.

[JoeP]

And then taking some photos of the dust?

C'mon, you have one job.

[Janet]

My sister gave me a steam mop for my birthday and I assembled it and cleaned my kitchen floor. I don't want to admit how badly it needed it. I also took the box of random junk and plastic bags off the floor and put it downstairs. Now it's spot belongs to the steam mop.

[S.Vashti]

I just finished putting a mobile base on my table saw, and screwed casters on my scroll saw, so that's done.

[Megatron]

I finally fucking quit smoking.

[livius drusus]

Holy shit, I never thought I'd see the day. Bravo, sir!

[Sock Puppet]

Not petty. Off topic. BAN HIM!

[ZEZOZE]

I talked about David Bowie with Chris Hadfield who happened to be in my studio today. Is that an accomplishment? It was definitely pretty cool...I don't often get starstruck, but this guy...

(i have an alien head in this picture...apropos)




eta-
btw...people on my fb were making cracks about photoshop and one asked why Chris Hadfield was standing beside a cardboard cut-out of me. I assure you i'm not that bad at photoshop. we were under a light and the flash on my phone created the effect. another person said it looked like we were shimmering into space.

[erimir]

I'm pretty sure that's just two cardboard cutouts standing next to each other.

[ShottleBop]

I participated in an American Lung Association fundraising stair climb this morning. Did 31 floors (657 steps) in 8:46.

[ZEZOZE]

Originally Posted by erimir

I'm pretty sure that's just two cardboard cutouts standing next to each other.

ha. i think they were being facetious in that why would there be a cardboard cutout of moi?

[Janet]

I showed a snotty teen computer nerd to the programming books and did not slap him when he corrected my pronunciation of OS X. I wasn't even really tempted to do it, despite the fact I've had perishing insomnia all week and should be short-tempered.

Further research shows we were both pronouncing it wrong. I will not track him down and correct him, either, because I'm a grown-up.

[lisarea]

Which one of you called it "Oh, sex"?

[Ensign Steve]

[BrotherMan]