The Dysmey Blog
The personal weblog of Andy West.
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03/11/09
An Aspire Expiring
Filed under: General, Politics, Work
Posted by: Andy @ 9:35 pm

my car

The transmission on my car gave out as I was driving out of the staff parking lot at work. I could still drive, but no faster than ten miles per hour, as the transmission was stuck in first gear. I had to take an hour off to drive to Precision Transmission on the northeast side of Muncie. The car will be in the shop for two days. I got a rental car in the meantime; it is a Geo Metro, and I am lucky to get it, because all the other rental cars have gone to students for Spring Break. I was told not to fill up the gas tank (for obvious reasons), so I put five dollars worth in it. I will also pay five bucks a day to park it because I will have it for only two days, and it is more trouble to try to get a temporary permit for the car.

my cat

Isis had indeed reverted to under-the-stair status again. I had to call the vet hospital to report her condition, and to get some meds for her. This time the meds are in pill form, which I can grind up in a mortar and pestle to mix in her food. This is a lot better than having to force-feed her through a syringe, as she does not know she is being medicated. She is recovering nicely.

my library

I have learned that Senate Bill 386, which would have consolidated the public libraries, died the death from being overloaded with amendments. I am not sorry it died that way. In fact, I would rather have started library reform at the State Library level. But that will not stop the local libraries from coming together to consolidate services and planning on their own.

work

As I noted, it is Spring Break, so the Bracken is quiet. We finally got an enhancement for the color printer in the Architecture Library, and the driver to go with it. Big PDFs and PowerPork presentations should now print without clogging the mailboxes. And while I am still struggling with EPrints for Windows, I got a Cardinal Scholar service on Fedora running with the latest EPrints (3.1.2).

my house

I bought myself a tool called a fulcrum weeder from Garrett Wade. It is two double prongs with a foot lever. Press the prongs around the target weed, then lean the handle in the direction of the lever to pull out the weed. It is very effective if you center the prongs right. It also leaves holes in the ground where the weed is pulled out. Madre remarked on this, and I was surprised that she knew about the tool. Evidently it was common beyond the Northwest where it was made until the Second World War.

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