Good grief, what a day. I started the dreaded 200-gallon batch at work today – fortunately I got the help of a couple of coworkers who will be working on a similar scale in a month or so. I reckon I’ll be helping them then; nothing’s been said, but it’s only right since they’re taking the time now. I hate working on this scale, though – we’re working with smelly, nasty materials, and in spite of the fact that we’re in coveralls and gloves, I always end up with the stuff on me somewhere. Then there’s the silica – fumed silica is a solid powder that’s lighter than air. If you look at the stuff the wrong way, you’re lost in a cloud of it. We had to put in about 50 pounds of the stuff – it was all over me, in my hair, in my socks – bleah. At least I was wearing a respirator. And tomorrow I’ll be doing it all again as we finish off the batch
OK, that’s enough of my whining, ’cause that’s all it is – whining. I came home, took a thirty minute shower (and ramalion is so right – massaging shower heads are indeed da bomb) and started to feel somewhat better. Add to that a lovely foot massage from takaza and some, uh, other stuff, and I feel much, much better now.
Meanwhile, in the second of the three times that I was actually able to visit my desk today I put in an order for an iBook for Takaza. I also went ahead and ordered an Airport card – we got a good deal on that and we’re finding wireless network cards for the laptops to be indispensible items. Both will arrive tomorrow and then the fun begins. We’ll need to figure out how to integrate the OS X iBook into our PC-centric network. Actually getting it connected and onto the net is easy, it’s the file sharing with the other PC’s that’s going to be a challenge. A quick Google search shows that it’s going to involve some Samba/CIFS configuring. OK, I’ve dabbled in that a bit so this should be do-able.
On the bright side, as soon as Takaza migrates over to the iBook, I’ll be moving over to his laptop and can finally reformat the IBM Aptiva I’ve been using, since it’s starting to shake apart under all the hardware and software that’s been added and removed. Best thing to do is to just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 98. We need to figure out what to do with the Aptiva, either leave it in our room or put it in one of the guest bedrooms as a guest box, where we currently have a console-only Linux box.
Mmmm…happy shiny tech. Big fun, you betcha.