Posted by lyle
Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:37:16 GMT
This is going on:
- Wyatt is growing rapidly and has new and interesting things to say daily. He is way into Bob the Builder.
- Gwendolyn is in that infant stage where she looks new and changed
twice a day. Unlike her brother, she is bigger then other babies at her
age; she is in the 95th percentile on the CDC Growth Charts.
- Daria is no longer being paid for work; and is working harder then
most. Being a full time mother is taxing. I respect and am in aww of her
more and more every day.
- My sister, Marina, is
living with her two girls in Georgia. Her husband Chris recently left
her and the kinds. On March 9th Chris is donating one of his kidneys to
Marina, who has had two such transplants in her life. She is currently
living on the kidney that Adriana,
our older sister, donated in 1993. Recently it was discovered that
Chris has an extra artery going to his right kidney; he has a genetic
mutation that makes him a better kidney donator then other humans. I
wish he had a better-husband gene too.
- My mother, Diana, has moved out of Santa Cruz to Cottonwood, CA. She will be help take care of Marina’s kids during the transplant.
- My dad, Peter, died last year on the 17th of March, so for the whole family this is a hard time.
- The program I work for, DANM, is going strong and is very exciting to be a part of. It’s also one of the most scattered jobs I have ever had.
- My birthday is coming up on the 19th, I’m throwing my self a LAN
party; last year, for my birthday, I incinerated my father’s body.
Posted by lyle
Thu, 22 Jul 2004 07:46:05 GMT
When I was in junior high school my father would type my papers for me. He didn’t do the work for me – he simply typed what I had already written. He was a very fast typist. After high school and college and a move to southern California I started working as a web developer and programmer. During a visit from my parents, or was it me visiting them, my father noticed my typing. I remember him saying something to the effect that he didn’t know that I could type – and that I looked fast. Until that moment I hadn’t really realized it my self. It is said that we teach our children by example. I guess we learn things from our parents we are not aware of.
I just got back from watching Spider-Man 2. The movie got me thinking about my father. Hell I went to the movie alon… being alone brings up my father for me. The movie’s theme is sacrifice for doing the right thing – and learning that some things you do not need to sacrifice. My father never told me what was right. He was not a preacher nor did he claim to have mystic answers. He didn’t die some heroic death, but laid in bed for months until one morning, after I said good bye, he left. But, and I know it is horribly corny to say, my hero was and is my dad.
Dad, thank you for teaching me to be forgiving and understanding. Thank you for wanting me to be better and telling me when I disappointed you. Thank you for being such a wonderful man, your example has enabled me to be one.
Posted by lyle
Wed, 07 Jul 2004 18:57:51 GMT
Daria, my wife, has a job up here at UCSC. She is the new Housing Coordinator for Cowell College. It’s keeping her busiy and interested. And we get to carpool (cheaper parking permit!).
Wyatt, my son, is transitioning to “Toddler Plus”, which is the older day-car room at the Children Center. He’s growing up so fast.
This weekend Daria and I are going to Minnesota for a wedding. This will be the first time we have been away from Wyatt for more then 6 hours or so. (both of us at the same time, that is) – It’s kinda scary and exciting. We are leaving him in good hands.
Posted by lyle
Thu, 01 Jul 2004 17:01:25 GMT
Recently Thunderbird switched it’s preferences or some such, so to use the new Thunderbird I would have to re-train my SPAM filters. Instead, I decided to switch over to Mail….
I have been using Thunderbird as my personal email client for a while now – it’s a great app with a very good spam filtering system (Bayesian analysis). Thunderbird also has a fairly rapid development cycle for an open source application. So, improvements are released all the time.
My work machine is a Macintosh PowerBook. For work I use Apple’s built in “Mail” application which comes with OS X. This is a wonderful app. Like Thunderbird Mail allows the checking of multiple accounts and supports SSL Auth SMTP and IMAPs.
Things I like about Apple Mail over Thunderbird:
- Mail’s SPAM filers work seamlessly with the OS X built in Address Book – which I use as my primary address application – creating a white list from all of the contacts in my Address-book.
- Mail displays an image of a person with the message (assuming the address book has a picture in it)
- Mail has a great “View -> Organize Messages by Thread” – which is just yummy.
- Mail’s SPAM filter colors the line in list view to a shade of brown – this makes ignoring and going through spam very easy. (I’m still in training mode.
- Mail has a wonderful Spell Checker; as you type and simply a great “algorithm”. Mail’s spell checker is so good that when I was using Thunderbird I use to compose the message in Mail and then copy it over, but then again, my spelling sucks.
- I like my mail inbox to be sorted by recive date. When set up this way Thunderbird goes to the wrong message (the one below) when I delete a message.
- Both clients allow you to block loading remote images in html messages, but Mail has a “Load Images” button for messages that contain images hosted somewhere else. This is very useful, because I sometimes get html messages that I want to see the images in. Viewing that message with the images in Thunderbird requires me to change preferences and then change them back when I am done.
A couple of things that Thunderbird is doing better then Apple Mail:
- Thunderbird is available on multiple operating systems. So at home I will still be running Thunderbird.
- In Thunderbird even in training mode I can have a message deleted when I mark a message as junk. In Apple Mail in training mode the mail is marked as Junk but is not moved – and a manual mark doesn’t move it either.
So for now I am using Apple Mail but I will definetly keep an eye on Thunderbird, I’m sure it will get better.
Posted by lyle
Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:47:40 GMT
I finally got PostgreSQL 7.4.2 to install with pgcrpto on Mac OS 10.3 (Panther). Here is what I did:
1) First visit the PostgreSQL on Mac OS X developer page on apple.com.
2) The first error I ran into was with the make reporting that “gcc2” was not found. On the developer page in the make section where it reads
root@mail:postgresql-7.4.1> make
I ran this instead (which forces the compiler to be gcc3, which should exist on your system if you have the apple developer tools.)
make CC=gcc3
3) After getting a test database up and running I found this
great resource on making the pgcrypto package. The deal is that you need to set the cryptolib parameter to be “openssl” in the pgcrypto make file located in “postgresql-src/contrib/pgcrypto/Makefil
e”. This worked fine after changing the cryptolib line.
# cd /usr/local/src/postgres/postgresql-7.4.3/contrib/pgcrypto
edit Makefile and specify cryptolib = openssl
(you will need to do a sudo on these lines - unless your account has write access)
# make
# make install
4) After all of that you will need to install the pgcrypto functions in a database to make them available.
psql db_name < /usr/local/pgsql/share/contrib/pgcrypto.sql
That did the trick for me. Good luck with all your cryptography goodness.
Posted by lyle
Mon, 19 Apr 2004 22:15:24 GMT
Well I finally got Business Objects to play relatively nice with two data sets. Now to make it look all nifty and to get Excel to be a good kid.
Last night I went out and saw Kill Bill Vol. II. I enjoyed it more then the first one. I do feel, however, that Quentin is trying to impress his audience. I would rather that he work on making a good film and less on trying to make the audience feel like they are watching a good film. I doubt that I am expressing my self very well with this point… oh well. Does anyone know what I am talking about here?
Posted by lyle
Wed, 14 Apr 2004 22:26:21 GMT
Daria (my love) got a job for 3 weeks – temp work, good money.
Wyatt (my son) is in day care 5 days a week 9to5.
Peter (my dad) died on March 17th. I miss him terribly. Any time that I sit doing nothing I think of him. Trying to go to sleep at night, esp last night, is very hard.
At work I am having trouble with Business Objects and merging data between a UCSC FINITE data provider (oracle) and a personal data file (Excel). Frustrating.
-Lyle
Posted by lyle
Tue, 17 Feb 2004 18:45:18 GMT
My father, Peter Troxell, is sick, real sick. He has had prostrate cancer for about 8 years now and, after retiring from KUSP in September, he has been in and out of the hospital. It is very hard to see your personal hero getting weak and vulnerable. The good news this week is that his PSA dropped from ~3500 to ~1300. Which means his current Chemo is working. Currently Peter is at his home in Lompico.
Posted by lyle
Wed, 08 Oct 2003 19:30:54 GMT
Daria’s B-Day this Friday and a b-day party Thursday night – thank god Maggi is hosting it and doing the food.
Daria’s mother and grandmother are staying with us for a week, arriving Saturday.
Wyatt’s B-Day next Wednesday – still haven’t planned it.
Open Studios for my mother is this weekend and I need to help out with signs and such.
Contract Flash Animation.
My friend Sean recently asked me if I would be interested in a flash contract… I was like “yeah!”. It’s due next week and I still do not have the artwork. And this project could take me nearly 20 hours to do. But I’m not sure I have time to do it. —but I need the money. Stressing!
Daria (my wife) is out of a job.
The theater company, MCT, that has been around since 1982 and which my parents founded is in a financial nightmare. Last night a group of people came into the general meeting and insulted the people that have been keeping the company going for the past two years. They came in with their own agenda and didn’t even listen to the presentation about the financial situation which Daria has slaved over for the past week. The general summary of Daria’s presentation: MCT has been loosing money for the past 3 years. We are still in business today because of the money from royalties of Miracle on 34th Street. Our publisher is no longer selling rights to our play because of a copyright depute. We are in legal battle over our play. Without the extra income and with our current volunteer base we can not survive another year. So we have three options: one more year, close down, go on a hiatus.
The group that came in decided to keep going, and they are willing to be the volunteer base that MCT needs… I, however, question wether this will last. And if it is possible to keep a theater company going in the San Lorenzo Valley. I hope MCT stays alive.
But there are clearly not funds to keep Daria employed. So we are a little stressed.
Oh and Daria is sick. And I am stressed a bit.
Posted by lyle
Tue, 16 Sep 2003 00:47:57 GMT
My sister, Marina Troxell, had her second child yesterday the 14th of September, 2003. You can find more info at troxell.com/baby/.
