Random MomBlog

The inside of my car windshield gets filthy (and I don’t smoke!), so I tried making my own windshield cleaner from equal parts of rubbing alcohol, ammonia, and water. It worked, I suppose, although there were some streaks.

So I decided to work on the streaking angle. This time, I used an old sock with a hole and water. After I rubbed the windshield, I went over it with a squeegee to remove all traces of water. Guess what? That worked really well!

So pick the window cleaner recipe you like best or use water; my best advice is to use a squeegee immediately afterwards!

The cool tricks for today (since I wanted to update my syllabus) include replacements and improvements to what I did before. Since TestXSLT is PowerPC-only, I had to find an alternative method. I’m using the command ‘xsltproc –output Syllabus.html opmlsyllabus2html.xsl Syllabus.opml‘ where Syllabus.opml is a file I edit in OmniOutliner and save as OPML, and where opmlsyllabus2html.xsl is a modified version of beigeopml2web.xsl from Buzz, as noted before. Runs like a charm on Lion!

Since I was mucking about, I decided to try to insert the current date for “Last Modified” line, and this time I found a wonderful hint to insert the current date with XSLT (see the top reply). For a brief overview of the XSLT date options, see this reference. While playing around with formatting the date, I ended up without a space where I wanted one, so I had to look for a way to insert a single space too (see the first hint in the last reply). It works, better than ever! I just needed TestXSLT to stop working to motivate me to try again.

Day 1 (December 3)

Our flight to Fort Lauderdale was early enough that I initially set my alarm for 4:30 am. However, I didn’t fall asleep as early as I wanted, so I changed it to 4:45 am. Despite those sleepy intentions, I was wide awake at 2:30 am, so I got out of bed at 4 am, knowing it would be a long day.

Day 3 (December 5)

We went to Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park at lunchtime. I went to the concession stand and asked for the cuban mix without cheese or mayo. I was told that special requests would not be honored, and if I had food allergies, I should just get the turkey sandwich. I don’t want a turkey sandwich! I want ham and pulled pork and pickles, the yummy parts of a cuban mix! I really didn’t like the dismissive tone of “just get a turkey sandwich,” so I biked to the closest deli instead. For 75¢ more, I got a cuban mix with chips and a drink! I apologized for my food allergies, and was told, “Hon, if you’re going to eat it, you should have it exactly the way you want it!” Wow, what a change from my previous ordering attempt! I am so glad I went to the Courthouse Deli instead! That one nice comment made me Very Glad I went there; I had pedaled over there because I was annoyed, but those kind words made me happy I had picked that deli.

Day 6 (December

The best part of today is that I had a really good nap! This is somewhat amazing since fire alarm testing was in progress. The alarms weren’t long, so I just went back to sleep every time.

I just saw the iCADE, iPad Arcade Cabinet (cheaper at Toys R Us right now), and now I know what I would do with an iPad if I had one. I’m not tempted, but at least I know what it’s good for now.

Here’s another dinner that’s simple to fix on the road (with a kitchen). After I stop at a store to pick up chicken breasts (one of the few foods Karston will eat) and a small bag of mixed frozen vegetables (or fresh, depending on the season), I can make this comfort food. Cale will often eat a lot of green beans, so between Cale and this soup, we can finish a bag of frozen green beans in a few days.

1 pkg creamy chicken ramen noodles
1 to 2 cup mixed vegetables (corn, bell peppers, green beans, or whatever you like; fresh or frozen), diced
1/2 to 1 cup chicken, diced

I started from this Ramen Fried “Rice” recipe, so once again, you can tell I can’t follow a recipe.

On the same theme of ramen noodles as the basis of a quick and simple meal, how about beef-broccoli (maximum 1/2 lb steak maybe restaurant leftover and pick up a head of broccoli), hot and sour soup (add julienned squash, green onions, and bamboo shoots if available), tuna casserole (add parsley if available), spinach-chicken casserole (use 1 pkg ramen and twice as much spinach by weight as chicken), or yatsobi (with half or less of the meat, and probably double the veggies).

Here’s another dinner, Oriental Beef and Noodles, that’s simple to pack for my family, but with fewer leftovers (sometimes none) than the spaghetti.

Surprisingly yummy!

When we travel as a family, it’s often nice to have a destination-cooked meal (since it’s not home-cooked at home) without having to stop at a grocery store for supplies. We almost always stay somewhere with a small kitchen (kids need juice that needs a refrigerator), including pots, a can opener, and a stove. One of the easiest is spaghetti, except that I dislike commercially jarred spaghetti sauce for having too much sugar.

For the sauce, combine and heat:

When we have the space, I add dried oregano, garlic powder, and a few shakes of habañero sauce. If we stop at a store, we add 1/2 pound ground beef (or a leftover hamburger from a restaurant).

Boil spaghetti according to the package directions.

Voilà, one spaghetti dinner! Since I pack the entire 1-pound package of spaghetti, we usually get four meals out of this. For us, this is better when we’re traveling with another family so the leftovers aren’t so oppressive.

I’m not ready to install Lion on all of my Macs, but it came on my new MacBook Pro at work. Yesterday, Time Machine was a fantastic way to get my applications, files, and preferences from the old laptop to the new! Now comes the more tedious task of making friends with Lion.

First up, the scroll wheel on my mouse scrolled in the wrong direction! I don’t want to change everything else (older Mac OS X and Linux) to match, so I had to change Lion’s default behavior. Apple menu > System Preferences > Mouse, un-check “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating.” Whew!

After that, I’m making friends with Apple’s Lion.

Since the start of this calendar year, I’ve lost about 10 pounds, and just recently people have started to remark to me that I look as though I’ve lost weight.

Initially, I had two theories. One was simply that a ten-pound weight loss shows. The other theory was that I’m wearing different, smaller clothes now. (No, I have not bought a new wardrobe! I don’t enjoy shopping, and clothes shopping is probably the worst form; furthermore most prêt à porter doesn’t flatter me) Now that I’ve heard the remarks a number of times, I can report that all, yes all, of the compliments are when I’m wearing smaller clothes. These are clothes I wore in high school, somewhat worn but they fit well again. Not new and sharp (although I’m sure that would work too!), but old and at least somewhat figure-flattering.

Although I did both, I have to say that dressing to look smaller is more effective to get others to notice than being smaller.

On a similar tangent, clothes that fit well are more comfortable and generally make you more confident in your appearance leading to overall improved confidence. Knowing you look good leads to feeling good. And that’s why I can sometimes drag myself out to buy clothes.

Since static IPv6 on Solaris 9 wasn’t fun enough on its own, it turns out that my Solaris 9 servers start losing a lot of IPv6 packets after a reboot. The problem appears to be in.ndpd (what should be the IPv6 neighbor discovery protocol daemon, but appears primarily to be IPv6 routing instead), and syslog reports in.ndpd[PID]: [ID 302683 daemon.error] router_add_k: RTM_ADD (interface bge0): Network is unreachable RTM_ADD every 1 to 5 minutes.

The fix is to shut down IPv6 (it’s not working anyway, so go ahead) and then restore IPv6; the only difference is that in.ndpd isn’t running. However, just TERMinating in.ndpd isn’t enough for IPv6 traffic to flow freely. Try this instead:
# kill in.ndpd
ps -ef | grep ndp
sudo kill -TERM 11292
# bring down the IPv6 interfaces
sudo ifconfig -a6
sudo ifconfig bge0:1 inet6 down unplumb
sudo ifconfig bge0 inet6 down unplumb
sudo ifconfig lo0 inet6 down unplumb
# flush IPv6 routes
sudo route flush -inet6
# verify that IPv6 is gone
sudo ifconfig -a6
netstat -nr
# restore IPv6 interfaces
sudo ifconfig lo0 inet6 plumb up
sudo ifconfig bge0 inet6 plumb up
sudo ifconfig bge0:1 inet6 plumb up your:ipv6:address::here/64
# verify interfaces
sudo ifconfig -a6
sudo ifconfig -a
# restore default IPv6 route
sudo route add -inet6 default your:ipv6:default:router::here
# verify route table
netstat -nr

I’m trying to stay off my diatribe soap box here, but I’m happy that Solaris 9 will be replaced with RHEL 6 in the coming months.