Someone is killing animals on Willow Street

 Life  No Responses »
Dec 162010
 

As many of you may know, we live in a little house on Willow Street in Humble, Texas. It is a quiet street, only a couple of blocks long, and many of the houses on the street have been around in one form or another since the late 1920′s or early 1930′s.

My wife has a kind heart and cannot stand idly by when she sees a starving animal. So she is in the habit of putting out food for the various critters in the neighborhood. Among the many other critters is a handful of cats that cruel and thoughtless people have dumped.

A few nights ago she heard a gunshot somewhere close by. The next day she noticed that one of the regular neighborhood cats was missing.

Today she noticed another cat is missing. It was this one. She had nicknamed it Squeegee.

Welcome Mat Cat

I am not an overly tender-hearted person. But it hurts me deeply to see my wife upset because one of our dear neighbors thinks it is OK kill the neighborhood animals.

I hope I will be able to track down the identity of the cowardly, gun-toting, low-life who is responsible for these killings.

Houston Chronicle Yearly Subscription Rates

 Life  No Responses »
Dec 072010
 

We have subscribed to the Houston Chronicle for many years. I have always purchased a yearly subscription. I want you to see what they have been doing to the subscription rates.

Year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Chronicle Yearly Rate $102.00 $102.00 $186.00 $186.00 $186.00 $186.00 $192.00 $264.00 $288.00
Yearly Percent Increase 0.00% 0.00% 82.35% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3.23% 37.50% 9.09%
Cumulative Percent Increase 0.00% 0.00% 82.35% 82.35% 82.35% 82.35% 85.58% 123.08% 132.17%
Yearly Percent Inflation 1.59% 2.27% 2.68% 3.39% 3.24% 2.85% 3.85% -0.34% 1.17%
Cumulative Percent Inflation 1.59% 3.86% 6.54% 9.93% 13.17% 16.02% 19.87% 19.53% 20.70%

Notice that the cost of a 1-year subscription has increased a total of 132.17% in the last 8 years, while the total percent inflation increase over the same period has been only 20.70%.

It is my understanding that newspapers receive the bulk of their income from advertisers. It is also my understanding that the better the circulation, the more attractive it is to advertise with that publication. So it would seem natural to me that a newspaper would want to increase the number of subscribers, right?

To the management of the Houston Chronicle: You don’t entice folks to subscribe to your publication by dramatically increasing subscription prices!

Dad

 Life  3 Responses »
Dec 012010
 

Ernest Clifton Tillman, Jr. age 81, passed away peacefully on December 1, 2010 after a long illness. Ernie was born on February 11, 1929, in Tampa, FL to Ernest and Katherine (Outlaw) Tillman. He grew up in Port Arthur, TX and proudly served in the Marine Corps.

Ernie met his wife, Harriet, while she was teaching in Port Arthur, TX. After their marriage in 1957, they moved to Corpus Christi, TX. He taught math and science in the Corpus Christi Independent School District for more than 25 years at Baker, Ella Barnes and Martin Junior High schools where he touched the lives of countless students.

Ernie was an avid reader, a writer and an inventor. He enjoyed spending time with his children and grandchildren. He had many hobbies including writing thought-provoking letters to the Editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

He is preceded in death by his parents and his grandson, Kyle Steven Klokker.

Ernie is survived by his wife of 53 years, Harriet Bowen Tillman; his children, Gordon (Michael Ann) Tillman of Humble, TX; Christy (Steve) Klokker of Boerne, TX; Marcus Tillman and Sherilyn (Bobby) Peña all of Corpus Christi, TX. His grandchildren, Jennifer Tillman of Charleston, SC; Gordon Tillman, Jr. of Chattanooga, TN.; Chelsea and Jamie Smith of Austin, TX; Kathryn, Erin and Travis Klokker of Boerne, TX; and Elisa and Ella Peña of Corpus Christi, TX. He is also survived by his sister, Martha (Pierre) Holloway of Naples, FL, and many nieces, nephews and cousins.

The family especially thanks Dr. Praderio, Dr.Reese, Dr. Dugi and all the staff at Kenedy Manor Nursing Home and Exclusive Home Health and Hospice for care during his illness.

Visitation will be held on Sunday, December 5, 2010 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Cage-Mills Funeral Home, 4901 Everhart Rd. Graveside funeral services will be held Monday, December 6, 2010 at 11 a.m. at Rose Hill Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in his name to Trinity Lutheran Preschool or the Music Program at Trinity Lutheran Church, 808 Louisiana, Corpus Christi, TX 78404.

Python 2.6 bad marshal data (Ubuntu)

 Life  1 Response »
Nov 292010
 

I’m running Ubuntu 10.10. Noticed various scripts failing. Discovered that if I tried to run python I would get this error:

$ python
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/encodings/__init__.py", line 31, in 
    import codecs
ValueError: bad marshal data

The fix was simple. Do the following as root:

# rm /usr/llib/python2.6/codecs.pyc
# python

Running python as root after removing the compiled codecs file will cause the codecs.py file to be recompiled and a new codecs.pyc will be created. I did not get any more errors after that.

2010-11-25 (Thursday)

 Life  No Responses »
Nov 252010
 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Interesting video (Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work):

Bottom line – Creative people need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get productive work done. How often do you get 8 hours of uninterrupted time at work? How about 4 hours? How about 1? It’s a rare treat at our office when we get 15 minutes of uninterrupted time!

Jason Fried states that the real problems in the modern office are the “M &M’s” (Managers and Meetings).

Check out this video and let me know what you think!

2010-11-09 (Tuesday)

 Life  No Responses »
Nov 092010
 

Google Chrome Extensions

I have started using Google Chrome as my browser-of-choice lately. It has the good performance and standards-support like Safari, but runs both on Mac and Linux, so I have have the same browser experience on both platforms.

It also has some nifty extensions that I like. Here is my current list.

TextAid

This one is really cool. It gives you the ability to edit the contents of a textarea on a web page using the editor of your choice. In my case, that would be Vim, the one true editor.

Because of a limitation in Chrome, you have to have a small external server running somewhere that interacts with the editor, but a link to one is provided on the documentation page for this extension and it is trivial to configure.

Vimium

This one gives you a handfull of Vim-like keyboard bindings in your browser. Very handy and it lets you navigate through your various sites without having to move your hands away from the keyboard. This is a great productivity booster. You can configure it to be disabled on certain pages if there is any conflict with Javascript-enabled custom key-bindings. For example, I have it set to be disabled when I am viewing http://www.google.com/reader/view.

Xmarks

I have been using this great extension for some time now. It is availble not only for Chrome, but also for Safari and Firefox. Keeps your booksmarks nicely synced across all of those browsers.

2010-10-13 (Wednesday)

 Life  No Responses »
Oct 132010
 

WordPress App

A friend of mine at work just told me about the free WordPress App for both the iPhone and iPad. I’m composing this using the app from my iPad. Was very easy to set-up. Seems to run fine. One glitch I have noticed – the area that you type in to compose your post seems to have a sizing issue because text doesn’t wrap properly. You can be typing away and the cursor will go several characters past the right edge of the screen before the line wraps.

Update: I’ve quit using this app as I have found it to be really buggy. Hopefully all that will get sorted out in future updates.

 Older Entries