Author: Joe

Somewhat Productive Weekend

I got a few things done this weekend since my post on Friday, just not most of what I’d planned (and really need) to do.

First off, I wrote an interface and pair of streams to replace Externalizable and ObjectOutput/InputStream. I had a bug at work where I’d implemented Externalizable but not specified the serialVersionUID and the versionUID changed without my custom serialization changing so suddenly my old data logs couldn’t be read. Basically I hadn’t realized how much metadata (serialVersionUID, class name, and probably some other stuff) was written to the stream, and working on this at home was my reaction to how inefficient Externalizable is for what I’m using it for. Anyways, the library I wrote this weekend typically sends exactly 1 byte of stream header information, and only sends the class name when the class hasn’t been written to the stream recently. After the header it sends exactly what you specify. Once I’m convinced it’s tested enough I may release it somewhere, but not yet.

Unfortunately, I designed the library to prevent a problem I’ve already solved at work, and since I was more concerned with recovering the ~500 GB of data I’d already recorded than having extremely lightweight serialization I can’t apply this there. I don’t even have a project of my own that uses networking currently, which makes it hard to really test the library. I’ll probably use the lessons learned at some point, but the most obvious application of this is in another part that’s already finished, tested, and working.

What I’d planned to do this weekend (same thing I’ve intended to do for the last several weekends) was take my car in to the shop for an oil change and to swap the winter tires off, as well as have them look at one of the back wheels to try to figure out why it rumbles (I’m guessing bearings from talking to people at work). Instead I slept till noon, and that late on a Saturday I expect to have to wait a while, so I put it off again. The idea is to get there not too long after they open and have a book so I can just sit in the waiting room till they’re done.

I did at least manage to make it to an auto parts place to buy new windshield wipers since the rubber part had mostly fallen off mine. I also tried to twist one of the wiper arms back to where it should be (it’s twisted such that the blade doesn’t meet the windshield at a right angle), but that wasn’t happening with the little pair of pliers I have. Wish I hadn’t left so many of my tools at my parents house, but that will be partially resolved in a few weeks after I go home for vacation.

I also finished with (not “finished”) a couple books. The first I read all the way through. It wasn’t bad, but between a couple rather graphic scenes and the way the world building was done it wasn’t quite what I prefer reading. The other one I got over half way through and had to ask myself why I was still reading it (at which point I promptly stopped). It was very much not the type story I prefer, and the overly heavy usage of the main character’s magic in nearly every situation just got old. I need to make another trip to the library soon, possibly to just wander till something catches my eye.

Printer Trouble

I have no idea what’s up with my printer now. I haven’t used it since February, but it worked fine then. Now that I need to print financial documents out for applying for a mortgage it’s failing.

My first attempt to print over the network (using an ubuntu machine as a print server) had no response. The printer didn’t get a job and windows had nothing in the queue. I didn’t think to try digging into the samba printer sharing settings. I then reinstalled the printer on windows and printed a test page. The printer got the request, but failed at feeding in a sheet of paper. I messed with it a bit and it sucked in two sheets at once, but the only spot it printed was the windows logo in the corner of the windows printer test page.

Then I figured it was the black ink cartridge, so I pulled it out. When I shook it I could hear sloshing, so I cleaned off the printer head with a damp tissue and got ink all over it. Figuring it was fine I put it back in and tried printing again. It spit out a mostly blank sheet of paper with faint blue outlines where the boxes on the page I was trying to print were, but lower down on the page black lines started showing up. I figured it just needed to be used a bit, so I hit print again. The printer never got the job, and reinstalling didn’t fix it.

At that point I figured the network printer setup was probably a source of major complications if not actual issues, so I plugged it directly into my desktop. It installed and I printed the test page, and this time the black was as dark as it gets, but the windows logo was very faded. I’m not concerned with the color, so I printed the document I was trying to print again. Once again it came out with faint blue borders and some faint but almost legible black text near the bottom of the page. The next print attempt actually worked, though it’s all a bit faint. I can’t explain why the test page came out fine but the next print was still faded, but I can live with somewhat faint so long as it’s all clear.

If I actually used my printer much as a printer I’d be rather tempted to just go out and buy a decent printer with a network port built in for network printing. As it is, I think I’ve used the scanner more than I’ve used the printer part of it, and it’s not like I do much scanning.

House Hunting

I’m finally getting somewhat more serious about looking at houses (townhouses), prompted by the fact that my sister is visiting in a couple weeks and one of the things she’s supposed to do is force me to find a real estate agent and go actually look at houses. On my own I’ve been kind of looking for over the past year, but by that I just mean every few months I find a real estate website and look at the townhouses available. I have at least managed to narrow down the area I’d like to live in, but until the last few days I didn’t have any specific townhouses I was considering.

I was talking to someone today about how to find out the crime statistics in a neighborhood and he pointed me to myneighborhoodupdate.net. It’s a remarkably well done map based report of what the police have responded to. The data is based on computer aided 911 dispatches and not everywhere participates in the system, but Colorado Springs supports it. I don’t know how far back the data goes, but it includes the police event number, the number of cars sent there, and how long they where there, as well as trends by event category over the past year.

The reason I commented on the map based searching being well done is that I experienced the other end of the spectrum last night on a real estate site. It said to zoom the map in to the area you wanted to search, then select the type of housing and min/max ranges on various fields and hit “search.” I zoomed in to northern Colorado Springs, selected townhouse/condo and the top result (of over 6,000) was way, way out of my price range. It was also in Breckenridge. I quickly gave up on their map.

I’ve used a number of sites for searching real estate in Colorado Springs. They’ve mostly had the same houses listed (and where I didn’t see the same ones it was probably because it had been months since I last checked and some had sold), but they’ve presented them different ways. The ones I prefer are map based, where you start with a map with houses marked on it (they’re usually also listed below the map) and can just browse. By far the best of these is Zillow, though some of their filters seem questionable (I had to turn on single family homes to have it show some properties that are flagged as townhomes in the details). Zillow also includes estimated values for all houses (not just the list prices of ones for sale), sale prices of recently sold houses, and listed price history of homes for sale. On the other hand, Zillow is missing information that some other sites have (HOA costs for townhouses for one), and some of the other sites present the full listing details better (though Zillow does quite well).

I guess I need to check my credit report and see what I can find out about mortgages.