We’re converting a 11′ x 11′ outbuilding we have to my office. I spent much of today finishing off the buried RG6(CATV) and Cat 5E runs. The buried power was already done and now I’m ready to caulk and seal up before laying down the vapor barrier and laminate flooring. Following that, I’ll get to do my favorite thing again: Hanging drywall and taping / floating. Luckily, that if followed by my second least favorite thing in the world, painting.

It is going to be nice though. We already have the A/C running and even not sealed up, it is very comfortable.

It also been a very good stress reliever with demoing out all the existing shelving and crap on the walls with a crowbar and a big rubber mallet.

I’ve finally managed to get around to updating my Cygwin -> Gentoo tool-chain. I messed with getting the current stable and patched gcc and binutils working on Cygwin without much luck, so I’ve turned to using Dan Kegel’s very fine crosstool scripts to build the chain completey on Cygwin. This is built with glibc-2.3.5, gcc 3.4.4 and binutils 2.15.(don’t remember). Since I’ve moved to using Dan’s script the install location has changed from /usr/local/cross-linux to /opt/crosstool.

You will need to make sure you have the distcc package installed under Cygwin as I’m no longer building it one off…no reason to now that it’s included in the Cygwin distribution.

The mkservice script has been updated and can now be found along with the distccd.sh wrapper in /opt/bin.

So here it is: Latest stable Cygwin to Gentoo tool-chain with distcc wrapper and script to make the service.

My wife and I have been looking for a Landcruiser for her for 3-4 months and have driven close to a dozen in various states of repair and wildy varying prices. We finally found our baby on Monday. It’s a ‘96 FZJ80, Green, Grey leather interior with 153k on the odo. The exterior is in very good shape and the interior is in excellent shape. It had three major issues which we used as bargaining points:

1) Cruise Control didn’t work
2) Check Engine light was on
3) Missing all back and 3rd row head rests.

We took it to our mechanic (Bob at Foreign Affair in Schertz, TX) and he plugged it in. Not good initially, misfire on cyl 6 and bad catalytic converter. He checked it out and it turns out the cat is fine and may have been marked bad when cyl 6 misfired. 6 is fine now.

We went back to the dealer and set our price and haggled. We hit an EXCELLENT price for (dealer or not) for a ‘cruiser in this shape and they found the headrests at the the trade-in dealer, so we were good to go. For the cruise control I hit the amazlingly useful Landcruiser forums at IH8MUD and found that I might try checking the brake fluid level indicator (float in the fluid reservoir) and cycling the actuator (motor attached to the throttle). That did the trick, so we dodged a bullet on that possibly expensive repair!

The bad news is that it needs new front brakes/rotors…ouch! But hey, we got our ‘cruiser and all is well with the world.

You gotta love a vehicle that has factory options for a snorkel, super-charger and heated front seats!

So it is now illegal to import a device from one country to another without the manafacturer’s consent…yeah freedodom! I assume that next it’ll be illegal to have pictures pictures printed or developed in a country other than the one intended, as it will be trademark infringment. Think how many people will be in Mexican jails…the horror of it all.

HP stops Expansys importing non-Euro PDAs | Channel Register

We’re having our 20 Year Reunion of the New Braunfels High School class of 85 this weekend. Melissa and I went last night to the Ice Breaker and had a excellent time. It was wild to see some of the folks I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Others I had seen off and a couple I didn’t even recognize. We passed on the cookout today, but we are going to the social tonight. I also thought about those that weren’t there and those who have passed in the last 20 years.

All in all, what a crazy 20 years it has been.

I talked my wife into letting me buy a Rigid Wet / Dry Vac from Home Depot for $39.97 this past weekend. She went with me to supervise and help pick out some hinges for a baby fence I was making for the bedroom. When we arrived there was “Tex” outside hawking some extra display gear. One of the items he had was the Ryobi SS30 1HP straight shaft trimmer, which just happens to be the one I’ve been looking at. “Tex” offered it to us for %50 off, full warranty, extra oil and a strap.

So I scored a shop-vac AND a gas trimmer while with my wife…we have a winner!