My New Chore System

I can’t seem to stay in one place as far as chore systems is concerned, but I just go with what works at any given time. I think it’s ok to mix thing sup a bit, too. Adds variety.

In searching for chore apps in the Google App Store, I stumbled upon a new little gem of an app, MoneyOrc. Aside from the app being very useable and awesome, I have never worked with a more responsive bunch of people behind the scenes.

I set up my 4 with their rotating chore charts (the MoneyOrc team was very kind to bump up the rotation to 6 weeks from 4 to accommodate our needs, see I told you MoneyOrc is awesome!), and I even added myself with a child account so I could have a nice checklist of things I need to do each day.

The kids check off their chores as they do them, then I check their chores at the end of the day. You can view chores by week or by day which is my favorite view. If they didn’t do their chore or didn’t finish it, they don’t get credit for doing it and have to pay a penalty (of your chosing) which comes out of their weekly allowance.

You can also issue penalties for behavior which also cost them.

The whole point of the app is to teach kids about money using as many real world scenarios as possible (including investing, jobs, and insurance).

Check it out, give it a try. What can I say? It’s awesome :)

Gimp Autosave Hack

I like Gimp, I really do. Yes, it has a learning curve, but it’s not unreasonable, considering all the tutorials and how-to videos available on the web. One thing has kept me from loving Gimp, at least until recently.

My laptop’s battery has been going downhill recently and sometimes won’t hold a charge for longer than 20-30 minutes so I keep it plugged in all the time. The problem is that my unreliable charging cable sometimes charges, sometimes doesn’t. So I experience more than the usual number of unexpected shutdowns (if I forget to diligently watch the battery meter). A project I have been working on has had me editing quite a few images in Gimp and also subsequently losing a lot of work when my computer dies without warning. I searched and searched for something that would work as an autosave feature since Gimp for Windows doesn’t come with that feature (it should).

Finally, I found something that works (as long as I remember to get it started when I start Gimp; next for something to automate that).

Here’s what you do: Download and install AutoHotKey. Create a script in notepad and save it as AutoSave.ahk (I keep mine on the desktop for easy access).

Paste this code (I have no idea if all of this is necessary, but it works):

;
; AutoHotkey Version: 1.x
; Language:       English
; Platform:       Win9x/NT
; Author:         A.N.Other <myemail@nowhere.com>
;
; Script Function:
;    Template script (you can customize this template by editing "ShellNew\Template.ahk" in your Windows folder)
;

#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

 

#Persistent

; Save the file every one minute.
SetTimer, AutoSave, 60000, On

AutoSave:
   IfWinActive, ahk_class gdkWindowToplevel
      Send {Blind}^s
return

If you don’t want it to save every minute, just change the 60000 value to a multiple of 60000/minute.

You might have to change the “ahk_class gdkWindowToplevel” entry. With Gimp open and AutoHotKey running, I right clicked on the icon in my system tray and selected “Window Spy” which brought up a window with the ahk_class name next to it.

Washer Update…Fixed!

Well, in spite of my high hopes for the agitator dogs fixing everything, the washer was still behaving insanely. The bottom agitator was only spinning in one direction which is why the clothes had gotten so tangled.

So I posted to my favorite appliance DIY forum and in an hour and a half, had a diagnosis that I needed a new transmission. Ugh.

If I chose to DIY it this time, I’d be on my own, DH wouldn’t be available to help me, but on the other hand, we’d done this once before so I figured with my awesome SIL’s help (and a video of the steps), we ought to be able to avoid the trip charge and hourly fee of a pro.

I decided I could do it, so we ordered the part day before yesterday, it was in yesterday and I think I had the part installed in less than an hour from the time I started. It was a nerve-racking few minutes waiting for the washer to fill up to see if I’d done everything correctly, but it came on and did what it was supposed to do… whew!

It’s kind of good that I had to do this because in the process of everything I discovered the agitator dogs needed replacing and when I got the motor off the transmission, I saw that the rubber drive coupler gasket was just about to self-destruct. One hole had already broken through. Thankfully we had an extra from another repair so I was good to go in that department.

So… here’s hoping we can go for a few more years without any major repairs.

Next on my list… putting up a clothesline to keep up with all the clothes I’ll be washing.

Replacing Agitator Dogs

Our Kenmore Elite 90 series washer has served us well for the last 14+ years. We have replaced (diy style) the clutch (iirc), the lid switch and the drive couplers.

Yesterday night while a load was washing I noticed a noise from the washer that was getting louder and (I think) slower too for some reason. I turned off the washer and found the clothes all tangled around the center agitator. I thought maybe something had gotten stuck underneath the agitator so I took the clothes out and drained the water (in hindsight I would have reversed that order, lol), but there was nothing there.

I went online to try to diagnose the loud grinding noise I heard and what might be the cause. I couldn’t find much consensus, but did see agitator dogs come up more than once and I kept reading that it was a cheap, easy fix. I figured it couldn’t hurt to rule that one out so I took the top cap off the agitator, unscrewed the plastic thingy in the center with the square end of a long ratchet wrench piece (don’t you just love my oh-so-technical vocabulary? lol) and was able to easily pull out the agitator dog assembly.

Sure enough, the teeth were looking quite worn. They were still able to engage the agitator under low pressure but when DH gave a mighty turn, they slipped and gave the nasty loud noise I had been hearing. So God be praised, we will once again avoid an appliance man’s trip charge and fix this old beauty for near nothin’.

Unconcatenizing a Publisher booklet

I’m pretty sure I did this once before, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to do it this time around. I had made a document in Publisher in booklet format (eg. pages 4 & 1 on one side, pages 2 & 3 on the other side of a single sheet of paper for a 4-page booklet) awhile back and needed it optimized for my tablet (only one page viewable at a time, not a 2-page per sheet spread as in booklet form). I searched and searched before I finally settled on this way to do it:

1) In Publisher, print document with a pdf printer (i.e. CutePDF) and choose Statement for paper size and Portrait for page orientation. Under 2-sided printing options, set it to Single-sided and print.

2) Open unconcatenized file in PDFScissors and choose separate odd and even pages.

Select regions for each odd and even page. Click File, Crop & Save or Ctrl+S to crop and safe as new file.

The margins might not be perfectly even all around, but they will be narrow enough to not take up too much screen real estate from your view of the book.

ETA:

I also tried it in Briss and liked the results even better as it told me the exact dimensions of each page (evens and odds) so I won’t have any discrepancies in page size in the final product.

Printer keep going offline?

I was having trouble with my printer going offline and Windows troubleshooter didn’t know what to do about it. I did some super-sleuthing and discovered that the IP address that I had listed for my printer (in Devices and Printers) was not the IP address that my printer showed in its settings menus. Here’s how I (hopefully) fixed it:

Thanks to the advice from this post, I navigated to the TCP/IP settings screen under network setup on my HP LasaerJet printer. I set the IP address from “automatic” to “manual” and keyed in 192.168.0.254 as the IP address as well as the default gateway.

I did have to uninstall/reinstall my printer since it was giving me an error message when I tried to update the IP address under the ports tab.

I’m finally back to work again and I’m expecting that I won’t have to fuss with it anymore. Whew! It’s goooood to have my printer back.

Encyclopedia Interactica

I’ve always been a fan of the French children’s site Poisson Rouge and was happy to see that they are trying to find ways to illustrate educational concepts as well as their mainly entertainment oriented content. I do see more room for growth, but I’m so far pleased with what I see. There are math, science, and music applications along with a few other ideas.

Gimposition PDF Booklet Creator

I rarely pay for software if I can find free ways around all the features of the pricier versions. One example is .pdf booklet creation. Adobe Reader is supposed to handle it just fine, but for some reason, it kept messing up a document I was trying to print yesterday. The pages were all mixed up, 17 on one side of the page 53 on the other. It was just not working. So, after trying everything I could think of doing, I went hunting for a free booklet creation solution and happened upon Gimposition. It is so intuitive, it’s not funny. You just load in the .pdf document you want to bookletize, tell it where you want the output file saved, and in about a second or two, the brand new booklet is waiting to be printed. It gets my vote!

Keeping dictation shorter

I have the hardest time keeping my children on task during our Riggs dictation. They can turn a 10 minute spelling or phonogram test into an hour if I let them. I admit that I’m easily distracted by the youngers and can tend to lose track of time so I’ve been on the hunt for a free timer program that would help keep us on track, but the ones I had used would always restart at zero and I wanted one that would let me restart back to 30 seconds after each phonogram or word as the case may be. I finally found what I was looking for! :) It’s called TimeLeft and its basic version is free.

I chose to keep it down to its bare bones and do without the title, headers, play/pause and restart buttons. This allows me to have a very small timer which remains on top of all windows, but which can easily hide in less used parts of my screen. There are easy to remember keyboard shortcuts for start (ctrl+s), pause (ctrl+p), and reset (ctrl+r).

Here’s how I use it. I get the timer window active, press ctrl+s to start it, then say the phonogram or word that is being tested on and press ctrl+r to reset it back to 30 seconds (or however much time I’m allowing for each item). Then if they beat the timer, I say the next thing and press ctrl+r again. If they don’t beat the timer and it dings, they leave that space blank (and subsequently get it wrong) and we move on to the next phonogram/word. They really don’t like having to skip one so they try real hard to beat the timer.

Printing PDF books in booklet format

(for binding your own books)

 

Spurred on with my daughter flying through her first grade reader and needing something else to assign for reading (and also because of an old reader which my husbands grandmother had given him, which we found to be superior to most, if not all, modern readers), I went on a search for some good, old school readers. I found a slew on Google Books and a few others at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s book archive site.

Then I got to wondering if there was a simple way to print them as “booklets” so that I could bind them with my spiral binder. Well, Adobe Reader’s help page on printing booklets was helpful, it got me started, but it took me a few tries to find what actually works.

Go to File > Print

1. Under Print Range, select your page range

2. Click on “Reverse pages”

3. Under Paper Handling > Page Scaling, select “Booklet Printing.”

4. Choose “Back side only” for Booklet subset.

5. Print.

6. Repeat process with same print range, but this time:

7. Uncheck “Reverse pages”

8. Choose “Front side only” for Booklet subset.

9. Put your 1/2 printed pages in your printer (for my printer, they go in without being rotated and face down), print.

 

Then all I have to do is cut the sheets down the middle, don’t get the pages mixed up, punch them and bind my book. I was afraid I might forget this process so am sharing it for your edification and my personal future reference.

Crash!

Went my data hard drive. Grrrr! It was working fine one minute and the next it was giving me an error that a file was corrupt or something so that I couldn't access the drive. Then when I rebooted, Windows told me the drive wasn't formatted, would I like to format the drive, Yes/No. Nooooooo!!!!! So all day I've been researching ways to get to my files that I'm sure are all still there. Not sure what happened. I don't think there was a power surge or blip, the computer wasn't dropped or otherwise damaged... All I can think is maybe a virus did this, but I do have an AV program on my computer and it's up-to-date. Sigh. The drive is listed in the Windows Explorer tree but doesn't do squat when I click on it. Just gives me the "not formatted" error.

So I'm running a free program called TestDisk and it has finally told me that my boot sector is bad. I'm in the process of trying to repair the boot sector. It also told me that my backup boot sector is ok so if this doesn't work I'll try to copy the good boot sector over the bad, see if that works. I just want my files, people! A word of caution to the wise (let them who have ears hear!), please back up your data! I was "this close" to copying a zip backup of my important files to a dvd when this happened. Wish I had gotten around to this sooner! If I lose everything on my disk I will be very discouraged. I did backup the documents a few months ago, but I've made a lot of changes to files and created new files since then, I would really hate to lose those. I'm praying that this works!

For backup, I'm using Back2Zip to backup my important files to .zip every night (or at least once a week!) and Cobian Backup (or I will be when/if I get my files back!) to back up my zipped files to an off-site FTP server. We do have a backup disk, but it is somewhat out of commission as well at the moment.

To reformat or not to reformat, that is the question.

My computer has some major issues, possibly virus related, we're trying to rule that out (i.e. I can't load McAffee, Adaware crashes when I run it, the keyboard layout that I installed is gone and I can't reinstall, can't do a windows update...). If DH can't find the cause, I'll probably be facing a reformat tomorrow. Lovely.

Computers, bah Humbug!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely sure that I could survive without my computer (well, I might be able to, but there would be some serious withdrawals), but sometimes they get on my last nerve. Last night after a reboot, my computer got to the black "loading Windows" screen and stopped, said there was an error with a file in the system32\config folder, "corrupt or missing." Uh-oh, that didn't sound good. I didn't really know what to do so I tried calling DH who was working, but he didn't answer his phone. I popped in the Win2000 disk and attempted a repair, but it didn't seem to do any good. DH worked on it some when he got home, but I still had to do one more fix this morning before it would finally boot again. But a lot of my drivers were gone so they had to be reinstalled. Our internet was down for a couple of hours this morning so I couldn't use that to aid in reinstalling drivers. Plus, there was something wrong with my computer and even after the internet came back up, I still couldn't get online. Finally, after powering down the modem and router for a loooong time and shutting the kids' and my computer down completely and restarting, internet was back. But there have been other weird gliches and it might take me into next week to get them all ironed out. Grrr. If I had the money, I'd be gettin' me a mac!

Gj;ukd... I mean typing on a new layout

I've been doing a bit of reading on alternate keyboard layouts and how they can increase speed and productivity while cutting down on errors and reducing hand fatigue. I compared a bunch of alternatives including the second most popular Dvorak layout, and after much thought, I've decided to try Colemak. I don't think I'll go cold turkey as I would like to retain my qwerty ability; ideally I'd like to be able to type in both formats as needed. I do expect my qwerty speed to go down as a result, but in the long run I think it'll be worth the effort in light of my future career in medical transcription and all the typing I'll be doing. So far this is my first attempt at typing in Colemak and it's taken me forever to do, but I can also see it's getting a little easier as I go along. And my fingers are doing a lot less traveling (my backspace key is getting a workout, that's for sure; trying to get used to the new "backspace key" [the old Caps Lock key]. I'll have to remap the Caps Lock key to a seldom used key (such as "right Windows key" or "Scroll lock.") I'll let you know how it goes.

Added 7/30/2008... I just tested my speed and was able to type an agonizingly slow 18 words per minute, but this was without looking at the keys (99% of the time). I'd love to see it up to 30 wpm by next week. We'll see.

Flashcard update

I did some snooping online and learned about the Leitner System for learning things for the short as well as the long term. Basically what it does is it remembers the cards you get wrong and you see them more often until you start to get them right. Then the ones you get right come back again in a week or two or three to see if you still know them (refresh and strengthen your memory). I found several freeware or open source programs that were based on the Leitner method and after trying out 3 or 4 have decided that my favorite is jMemorize.

Pros:

Free
Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows
Can arrange flashcards in categories
Text formatting on cards (very simple tho, no highlighting)
Attach images to cards
Has nice charts to keep track of progress

Cons:

Doesn't allow sound attachments
Doesn't allow highlighting of text

All in all, not too many drawbacks. There's another one called Memory Lifter which I think I will use to practice typing commonly misspelled words. Memory Lifter has a function for adding sound where you can either add a sound file or you can record a sound, so I can just speak them into the microphone and off I go. The con for me with Memory Lifter is that it makes you type out every answer, doesn't just take your word for it, but that will actually be a pro in regard to my misspelled words list.

A day at Grandma's

DH and I had a meeting we had to go to down in the big city so we took the kiddos to Grandma's for the day and did they ever have a ball. They didn't want to leave and wondered why we weren't just spending the night there, lol. I'm glad they had a good time.

I got a new toy today :) I "bought" a new mp3 player (mine is refurb'ed so much cheaper than list price!) on scarf credit (meaning as soon as I get a scarf made and sold to cover the cost, I'll pay my parents back for it). It's something I can put Geo's composer study music on so we can listen to it for school, books in mp3 format from Librivox, and it's also something that I can put a whole bunch of motivational (home organization, home economizing, homeschool, kids, family, marriage, devotional...) podcasts on and listen to while I blitz around the house beautifying it and removing layers, trying to get rid of some of the evidence that a passel of kids live here. (LOVE the kids, hate the mess!)

Oh too, my mom said she went down to her local paper and asked about coupons and the lady said she could come on Thursday and look thru what was left before it got hauled away. Mom was pretty sure they have coupons in them. I'm so excited about that! I think I need to check with our local paper and see if they'd do the same for me. And my loving brother gets a free paper that has some coupons in it which he's saving for me. I'm on my way!! :) (Thanks for everyone's help!)

My journey into Ubuntu

My dad turned me on to Ubuntu (operating system) the other day, was raving about how cool it was, so easy to install. Mom had been having problems with Windows on her computer so he decided that they didn't have anything to loose in trying it and installed it on her computer.

The more he talked about it, the more I was dying to try it too. I've always been smitten by the idea of trying an alternate OS, but was always way too scared, felt totally out of my element so never did anything about it. But this time (since I knew he was there to help hold my hands), I got brave and decided to give it a try. I installed version 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon (I think they might have released an "H" version in the last little bit, not sure).

I had to burn the .iso file to a disk, then boot to the disk to get it to start up. Ubuntu lets you test drive the OS (without making any changes to your hard drive) to see if you like it or not. I was mightily impressed with what I saw so after a little hesitation, I started the install. I got a little nervous when I got to the hard drive partitioning part, probably should have done a little more research because I did something wrong (I think I was supposed to do the Manual partitioning, but I didn't chose that) and now Windows doesn't recognize my hard drive (a 2nd drive, not with Windows installed on it, just a data disk). Windows thinks I need to format the drive. But Linux sees it just fine. Strange. I tried to format the drive twice in Windows but it said it couldn't both times. Luckily I had backed everything on that drive up the night before so it wasn't the end of the world.

Linux is a whole 'nother animal from Windows so I had to do a fair bit of asking Papa for help and searching around the net for directions on how to install programs (one of the major differences between Windows and Ubuntu) and other various commands I had to do from terminal (kind of like DOS prompt).

Ubuntu is awesome in that it detects almost everything that it should. I was immediately on the net, could see all my drives and all the files in them (even on the drive that Windows thinks is toast), my display was lovely...

I now don't remember everything I did, but I started figuring that if this was going to work for me, I'd have to be able to run certain Windows programs in Ubuntu (or therabouts). Dad told me about a commercial virtual machine program out there that would allow you to use Windows software (actually run a virtual Windows session while in Ubuntu), so I looked into it, installed the trial, wasn't too impressed.

I searched a little more and found a free gem of a VM program called VirtualBox. While it's not perfect and it does have it's little things here and there, it's so far working GREAT! I created a VM, installed Windows 2000 onto it (at first I was worried that when it said it had to format C: that it was actually going to wipe out my C drive, but not to worry, it just thinks the .iso image file "partitioned" for it is C drive, what it doesn't know won't hurt me), got it on the net (with a lot of help from DH), and I'm now in the process of Windows Update, then on to installing all the drivers I still might need, and then some of my most needed Windows software (Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Word, Excel & Publisher, (sorry OpenOffice and Gimp, you just didn't do it for me)). Then I will be in hog heaven with access to Windows and Linux software and a super little OS to run the Linux stuff on...

...my kids' computer is next, bwahahaha!

Pros:

• Ease of install
• Lovely desktop theme right out of the box
• Some neat visual effects (lots actually, wrapped up in a thing called Compiz, and they are SO fun!)
• Price - Free!
• The project is alive, it's constantly being developed, updated, issues addressed
• Lots of free software to chose from
• Not a huge learning curve coming from Windows

Cons:

• Firefox for Ubuntu doesn't have the "copy image" command
• Can't get the Flash Player to work in Opera
• Wish Windows programs would work without any extra stuff needed
• Potentially not as bug-free as non-free OSs
• Back everything up, anything could happen during install

Favorite Linux programs so far:
Gparted - graphical partition editor, again you burn the .iso to a disk, then boot to the disk to edit the partitions. I think I should have done this even before installing Ubuntu, maybe my drive wouldn't have confused poor Windows so badly.
VirtualBox - Run Windows from Linux, access both without needing to reboot. Another little plus about VBox is that Windows loads so bloomin' fast compared to the old way of actually having to reboot the whole computer. Windows restarts in it's little VM window so I don't have to stop what I'm doing in Ubuntu just to restart Windows. Nice.

In mourning

Well, it's official (I think), my old faithful palm pilot is kaput, no more. She had been refusing to charge properly and now she won't even power up. Sigh, sniff. We had a good run, old friend, may you rest in peace.

Word Saving Glich

A few days ago I was working on Word and started noticing that things I knew I had saved weren't showing up when I closed the file and opened it again. It was frustrating to say the least! I did some searching around and at first I thought it might be a bad relationship between Adobe 7 & Word 2000, but was hesitant to uninstall Adobe. Instead I uninstalled/reinstalled Word (that took a good long time too tho), and it didn't fix the problem. Then I found something that suggested the normal.dot file might be corrupted so I deleted every instance of that file I could find. That seemed to be the magic bullet because now things are humming along again quite nicely, I'm once again able to make pdf files (that was messed up too) and my changes are being saved. I'm happy that it was such an easy fix.

I got the job

of doing a church directory that is. I figured with a database driven mail merge, it couldn't be all that difficult. So far I'm having so much fun coming up with different layouts (2, 3 and 4 column pictorial layouts, compact text-only layouts...) and learning more than I ever did before about mail merging in Word. Yeah, I'm a geek, but what can I say? lol