fnord

The battles with the mice continue, with the purchase of two new traps of a type they haven't yet had the opportunity to figure out.  (Traditional wood-and-wire mouse traps are useless; the mice steal the bait and leave the trap still set.)  After today's shopping trip I also have a couple new pairs of pants, giving me a grand total of five pairs I can actually wear without acute discomfort, counting my suit.  I also have another set of orthopedic shoe inserts, which lets me get a second pair of shoes into action without having to swap inserts around every time I swap shoes.  (Truth to tell, I could probably use *something* for my motorcycle boots, too, but it's a damned fine line between being able to walk in them without hobbling and not being able to get the boots fastened.)

I mentioned that I had an interview Friday with a telephone-switching company called Tekelec in RTP (technically Morrisville).  The feedback I got from the recruiter Monday was that "they thought the interview went well.  They want to speak with one more candidate just to compare and then will be making a decision."  No further news since then, though.  If I don't hear anything more by Monday I'll ping the recruiter again.

Guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and order more checks, seeing that I'm down to one.  I was kinda hoping my next check order would be from a different address.  Preferably not a North Carolina one.

In other news, my toe's healing well.  The second abscess seems to have just popped then closed right up.  I still wish there was someplace I could just buy a new foot and ankle, though.  "Actually, why don't you just swap out both legs from the knee down?"  I wonder how long it'll be before we'll be able to snip a tissue sample and just clone a new limb....  (Probably bloody never, if that bible-thumping imbecile in the White House gets his way.)

Oh yeah, and check out the new Logjam 4.4.0 release.  It rocks.  The magic-link feature in particular rocks much ass.

Car Talk

The car now has new front brakes.  Surprisingly, the rotors weren't scored -- probably because, surprisingly, the stock disc pads were bonded, not riveted.  This is a good thing, because somehow, at some point, both pad wear indicators had been bent back to the extent that the disc pad backing plates would have contacted the rotors before the wear indicators did.  (At which point, of course, we would have found ourselves suddenly sans brakes.)  Had a pleasant chat with the mechanic about the differences between the base Intrepid and the R/T while he did the work, and also got the first really good look I've had at the suspension.  It's a big departure from the GM suspensions I'm used to looking at.  There are, for instance, no front control-arms -- just two forged links locating the bottom end of the MacPherson strut.  (The rear is similar.)  And the roll bars don't attach to the steering knuckle or the links at all -- they hang on pushrods that act on the struts.  It's a nice design -- I'll bet it gets the unsprung weight and the friction WAY down compared with GM's heavy stamped control arms and roll bar attached via rubber bushings to the lower control arm.

I'd intended to get the car re-inspected at the same time, but found I didn't have the current registration certificate with me.  Fortunately, I was able to find where on my desk it had disappeared to, just as I was beginning to think we'd have to get a replacement registration slip from DMV.  We still need to go to DMV, though, because I discovered that in all the chaos of jobhunting and assorted impending job prospects over the past year, we managed to overlook getting a new title issued without the credit union as a lienholder (it's exactly a year ago yesterday that they signed off on the title).

Bits & pieces

( All the news that's fit to vsnprintf() )