Statrix Redux

Baseball is on my mind again as tonight the Rainbows take the Dons from the University of San Francisco. This is the opener for a four game stand featuring our first doubleheader tomorrow. I’ve seen them before, but don’t know much about this year’s team. They are in the WCC and pegged to finish sixth which doesn’t sound like much, but heck, Hilo almost stomped us last week, so who knows?!

In other baseball news, I’m playing MLB Fantasy Baseball again this year. Since I’m essentially lazy I doing a public league with a list draft. I took some advice from my boss on which pitching staffs to consider (I did lousy there last year), but am pretty much going to let the field sort itself out. It was fun last year, even though I sucked big time, but there you go.
In other news, my doctor has taken me off the DL, letting me know that I had an “excellent response to treatment.” In short my face doesn’t need to be removed for health reasons, though the jury is still out on aesthetic reasons for doing so. 🙂
That’s it for now, time to start considering a team!
Aloha!

Yesterday I gave Eeedora a try. It looks really nice with the Thunar window manager, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a working sierra.ko module up which means that however nice it is, I can’t use it. If I could get my USBConnect 881u to work with it, I’d probably make the move. I’m not done here naturally, but I was hoping for a quick and easy connection.
I also am going back to my dermatologist today. I’d been a while and I’ve been dutifully putting Fluorouracil on my face twice a day and what a pain that has been. At first nothing happened and I thought perhaps my doctor had cut out the cancer completely. No such luck. Within a couple of days the area had reddened and was a bit swollen. Next a thin scab formed. Finally it started “cracking” and bleeding a bit from time to time, looked terrible and frankly, hurt a bit. Everytime I showered it would redden further, but at least it felt a bit better. Now, after almost a month, my face has almost completely healed with just a wee scab, though still a bit of pain. We’ll find out today what’s what. I do hope I can stop with the Fluorouracil, which btw, can be seen below…

And I’m still waiting for my Alaska Airlines travel voucher. I’m hoping I can swing a trip to Mexico City, but we’ll have to wait and see, eh?
Aloha!

Yesterday it was time to get the Eee to recognize that fact that it has 2GB of RAM. This turned out to be reasonably easy, though at any given turn I guess I could have bricked the box. Still the instructions are very clear on wiki.eeeuser.com.
The first step was to set up the computer to run in rescue mode. This not only helps prepare the system, you need to be in that mode to install a new kernel, it helps prepare the person doing it since setting up grub for rescue mode is pretty much the same as setting it up for a new kernel.
Once I’d set up rescue mode and tested it (don’t you always test?), it was time to download a new kernel. I’ve compiled kernels before and the idea of having to do it for the Eee either on or off the Eee itself didn’t appeal to me, so I went with the work done by EeeUser forum member eFfeM.
There are three different kernels listed on two different sites hosting the same page, here and here.
My experience was mixed. All three kernels booted and seemed to run the Eee just fine except for using the Sierra USBConnect 881u. I’m not going to link the kernels because the instructions should probably be read, but my experience was…
1. usb/fmlinuz.gz – this kernel is supposed to be more or less “stock” with USB support compiled in. This did not allow me to use the USBConnect card, it was recogized as storage and not as a modem.
2. nousb/fmlinuz.gz – worked fine with the USBConnect.
3. big/fmlinuz.gz – this didn’t work with the USBConnect either and seemed to give a lot of error messages in the log viewable with ‘dmesg’.
Since I found one that worked I stopped and went on to other things.
I will note, however, that I’ve never tried the Eee with the standard 512 MB of RAM. I basically installed the 2 GB card immediately. At first, till I put in a new kernel, it only recognized 1 GB and seemed snappy enough in speed. With 2 GB I don’t notice any improvement, nor does ‘top’ reveal any paging activity for either amount. Both amounts are sufficient. The only reason I can think of to go with 2 GB is that in the future I may go with something that needs it (if I ever bother installing XP for instance, though frankly, I can’t imagine why I’d bother).
Aloha!

FedEx arrived shortly after UPS yesterday and with them, the Eee PC.
The first thing I did was to install the memory card which had arrived a few minutes before. Then I immediately plugged it in and in less time than predicted it was charged up. I’ll admit for a moment I was taken aback as I am used to battery lights going from orange or red to green and this one simply goes off. I had to pull up the system status info to see that it was actually okay. Now that I know what to look for there’s no problem.
Next I tried the WiFi connection and it worked fine with my home network. All good so far.
Then it was time to get my USBConnect 881u running. I downloaded a prebuilt sierra.ko and followed most of the instructions found in the linked thread. It worked fine, though I’ve yet to complete things by making my ip-up.local file edit my resolv.conf file. Some folks don’t seem to need to do that, I do. Go figure.
Then I decided to upgrade the software through the Easy Interface tabs. That went fine, including the BIOS update. I did have a moment after that update when the wifi failed, but I simply deleted the saved connection and reconnected. All good.
Finally I downloaded and installed the stuff necessary for Advanced Desktop. That too worked fine and now I’m resting on tweaks for a bit though I still need to get a kernel that recognizes all 2 Gb of my memory, right now it see only 1 Gb.
The best source of information I’ve found so far is at eeeuser.com. Besides articles, there isn’t much I haven’t been able to find either in their wiki or their forums.
Aloha!

Today UPS beat FedEx but at least a few minutes, indeed FedEx isn’t here yet so I don’t know if it’ll be minutes or hours. In any case I now have a 2 Gb card for the ASUS Eee PC which, as you might guess, is coming via FedEx. Luckily for me President’s Day is enough of a holiday for me to have the day off, but not enough for UPS and FedEx to take the day.
So 50% of my waiting around is done, I can only hope FedEx comes quickly as memory isn’t that useful without a computer to stick it in!
More later…
Aloha!

Sadly, today’s game wasn’t one to write home about – luckily I’m home, so I’ll write anyway. The starting pitchers pitched well, save for one bad inning by the Rainbow pitcher that accounted for all of the Vulcan’s runs. The Rainbows never really warmed to the challenge though, scattering their runs throughout the game, one an inning at best. This included one terrible inning where the Rainbows had three hit batters, loading the bases and still only managed one run. That’s been a big complaint of mine for a long time with Rainbow teams, their inability to take advantage of what’s given to them. Sigh.
But many kudos to the Vulcans. They are, after all, my team away from home as my folks live in Hilo. To be completely honest, I spoke with Coach Estrella before the game and wished him luck and said our team might be better for losing today, “so go ahead and stick it to us.” They did. They deserve the win and it breaks a long streak for them, so more power to ’em. I hope to see a game in Hilo some time.
Beyond that please don’t pay any attention to the number strikes recorded at t
he bottom of the previous scoresheets, I was miscounting. The score boxes are accurate (or as accurate as I can be), but my counting was way off. The pitch count should be fine though.
Having said that, today I simply stopped counting strikes, but you can if you like. Here are the sheets.
Vulcans:

Rainbows:

With both teams playing a much better brand of baseball, the Rainbows beat the Vulcans in a game that featured two Rainbow home runs, one a solo shot, the second for two runs. Both starting pitchers played well, though the Vulcans gave up two runs in the first inning. Here are the score sheets…
Vulcans:

Rainbows:

Aloha!

The Rainbows took eleven innings tonight to beat the UH Hilo Vulcans in the season opener at Murakami Stadium. The game took place on the new Domo Turf.
The game was not a shining example of how to play baseball. The Rainbows couldn’t pitch or hit for most of the game and Hilo committed error after error while doing a better job than the Bows in other areas. It wasn’t till the end of the game that Rainbows came alive and came from behind to take the game and they did that after Coach Trap substituted freely to get his team to perform. It worked, but I can only hope future games don’t require such kickstarting.
It was also my first attempt at scoring this year and I was not at the top of my game either. I started getting it straightened out later, about the same time we had some really strange goings on. 🙂
Vulcans:

Rainbows:

I just noticed that the three items I ordered from Amazon are being shipped by three different carriers, a fact I find a bit amusing. I decided what I really needed was an ASUS Eee PC:

A memory upgrade (2 GB):

And an SDHC card (8 GB) to top it all off:

Well checking the shipping page to track my packages it just dawned on me that the memory is coming by UPS, the computer by FedEx, and the SDHC card by USPS. The private companies promise Monday delivery which surprises me as it’s President’s Day, but that, of course, means the SDHC card won’t be arriving that day.
Baseball, new computers, all good. 🙂

Yesterday was P&C day, today is opening day for the University of Hawaii at Manoa Rainbow Baseball team. It’s an in- state, heck in-university system opener as we take on the UH-Hilo Vulcans.
I’m looking forward to more than the game, it seems we have new turf which has been a long time coming. I’ll be in my usual seats on the third base line where I’ve been for years. The team is now in the first base dugout, but they used to at third way back when we got our season tickets!
We aren’t picked to do all that well this season, fourth in the WAC it seems. That’s
not good as the WAC hasn’t been strong since Rice left and indeed, was pretty much only strong because of Rice. To be honest, I don’t go expecting that we’ll go to the College World Series – would be nice, but… 🙂
I’m also ready with this year’s scoresheets. I get ’em from Christopher Swingley’s “Swingley Development” site and I’m fond of the cyan duplex version with pitching stats.
So take me out the ballgame and let’s play ball!

Meanwhile in the pro front things besides the government hearings have started heating up!
February 14, 2008 IT HAS BEGUN!
First date injured players, pitchers and catchers may report to Spring Training
February 19, 2008 1) {
print ” – “;
print $z;
print “ days left!!”;
}
?>

First date all players may report to Spring Training
February 26, 2008 1) {
print ” – “;
print $z;
print “ days left!!”;
}
?>

Mandatory Spring Training reporting date for all players
March 25, 2008 1) {
print ” – “;
print $z;
print “ days left!!”;
}
?>

Opening Day: Boston vs. Oakland in Tokyo