Day Books: 1994 - The Month of March

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March 5, 1994 (Sat) 9:13 PM Lowell, MA

FurFace & Dr. Kilgor

I had trouble getting her to eat after she came home, and it wasn't until last weekend, when the stitches were removed, that she finally began to eat again. When the stitches came out, I remembered to get her weighed ... 7 pounds!! She had lost over a quarter of her body weight!! Now I'm facing the problem of her demanding food every 6-8 hours, and I'm letting her eat an entire 4 oz. can of food every day, instead of making it last 3 days. I've been indulging her so that she can build back her strength, but she seems to have forgotten that dry food exists!

Jean found the pictures from the U.K. and sent them there were a dozen very underexposed rolls of slides. I sent 27 slides to be xfer'd to a Photo CD, and have returned everything to her. We had a lot of mail messages on CompuServe during the crisis.

Kent Reed at NIST sent e a copy of GhostScript, a freeware PostScript emulator, so I finally got around to making IGESDRAW generate Encapsulated PostScript for Phil at Sandia ... he's only been asking for it for 2 years now. :)

The first cut at it was a standalone called IGESPOST, but after getting some feedback from PostScript users on the quality of the output, and feeling *really* grunged about the duplication of code, I spent today getting it rolled back into IGESDRAW. This turned out to be easier than I thought because I got a brainstorm after I made the decision, just as I was going to bed last night.

I came to the Szcechuan Garden for supper tonight (after ST:TNG) to start looking at the 3 Windows C++ books I bought a few months ago ... now that I'm back into programming mode, I think I'm ready to tackle some projects I've been ignoring. But there's a TV playing at the bar as well as the classical muzak, so I'm pretty distracted one of those Real Life Cop shows with lots of sirens.

Linda Martino called from LA to say that she got laidoff from IBM (so did Eva Casey from Applicon!) but that they were looking for contract people to work on IGES down in Boca Rotan, FL for about 4 months. They've offered me $50 an hour, but I told them I want $65 ... the ball's in their court.

I got a check for $3,000 from a company in MA for WISL last week, which I really needed because the $3,000 check from the U.K. has not cleared yet (it's been 3 weeks so far). The local company hit some snags because of function name conflicts with the Borland compiler, but they also found some serious bugs in the Type 213 code in LSTLIB a bunch of "putxxx" calls that should have been "prntxxx" calls. <sigh!>

Claudio Nebia called from FIAT in Italy this week he's trying to get me some more money for the invoice I sent hi in spite last summer. They'll still take 20% of the $500 for taxes, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Brian left for Argentina again last weekend ... don't know when he'll be back. Haven't seen Lynn&Paul for a long time, either. We've had several blizzards, and Boston has broken the alltime record for snowfall this winter 89.2 inches, I think.

I ordered a transparency adapter for the scanner because they reduced he price by $200 to $499, but when it arrived, I discovered that it just could not give me a sharp enough image from 35mm negatives, and I didn't even bother to test it with 2.25x2.25. I'm sure it's fine for 4x5 or larger, but it just isn't good enough for the price. I thought I could use it on Mom's 126 slides, but they're too fuzzy. I decided that I could still get better results from having enlargements made and scanning the prints, so it's going back ... 15% restocking charge = $75.

Well, I think that about gets me caught up on the highlights of the last few weeks.

March 14, 1994 (Mon) 2:50 PM Lowell, MA

Messed up again ... the Eid was this morning & I overslept!

Jim Fleming from Cummins was in town last week for training ... we had supper last monday night at a chinese restaurant near his hotel & talked about ST:TNG and "Lois & Clark". I gave him source code for WISL to make VAX versions for me ... Have to call him to check and contact the Germans that it will be ready Real Soon Now.

Loaded the income tax software over the weekend ... Once I got the Federal done, the State was a nobrainer, since it copied everything from the Federal records. I owe penalties on both because nothing was withheld. WiZ WORX showed a $8K profit on $20K in gross receipts $15K from the contract at ADRA.

Had a snafu with the rent ... I didn't have enough coming up on the first, so when Paul came to plow, I gave him $400 and promised the balance in a week. The next weekend, he was back to plow, and I meant to give him $1,200 ... the balance, and the next month early to make up. Well, I wrote the check for $1,600 by mistake, and Terry called to say she was sending me a check for $400.

All of the bills from Saturday's mail have bee paid, the rent is paid until the end of *APRIL*, and I have $2,400 in the combined checking accounts.

I'll have to call that guy at IBM about that contract in Boca Ratan ... he offered $50 an hour, and I said $65 because of my special skills ... he hasn't called back, yet.

Another thing I've been doing is updating the WiZ WORX User Guide ... adding PostScript support to IGESDRAW (I got the colors working!) has added a few new switches, and I fixed a glitch in the WordPerfect output ... it did not support "SYMBOL" for the display of Point entities.

I've received several packages from ASP vendors to "package" my stuff for CDROMs, and they all have different rules & software ... however, I don't expect to spend much time on these programs in the future, so I might as well get them out there now.

FurFace's recovery has been splendid! We're now in a battle of wills to break her "new" cycle of canned food 34 times a day ... she was completely ignoring the dry food. I'm also keeping the toilet bowl closed so that she will drink from her dish. OTOH, she can still find an open dryer full of warm clothes without any help. :)

March 22, 1994 (Tue) 2:40 PM Burlington

Let's see ... Mike Seher got laid off from CV last week hardly anyone left there that I know.

Ordered upgrades & sent shareware registrations last week. Did my taxes (finally!) ... owe the Fed $3,000 exactly (!!) and a few bucks shy of $800 to the state. Called Mom and borrowed $3K to pay the Fed. <sigh!>

Got a callback on the IBM contract ... they won't need me, after all.

Went with some of the muslim brothers to a Jewish Synagogue in Nashua at the invitation of some Rabbis ... they wanted us to join them for a memorial service for the victims of the Hebron mosque massacre. We explained that we don't do "memorial" services, and that some brothers might have a problem with worshiping with Jews.

We did, however, agree to get together for a Sunday lunch (men only) from a Kosher deli to discuss youth activities. The brothers kind of shanghaied me into being the imam for the group. One of the rabbis is very knowledgeable about Islam, and his Arabic is better than the other 3 brothers who came they all speak Urdu!! That Rabbi is also a Trekker, and uses the Internet, so I'll send him a copy of the notes (from the palmtop) by email.

It snowed again last night, but then turned to rain so there was no accumulation to record, but the drive back from Nashua was a PITA.

I decided to have lunch at the Pewter Pot, even though Brian is still in Argentina (well, he may be in Mexico City by now) ... I came down to Burlington to get a copy of the Visual C++ upgrade on CD for $99. Yesterday I used my FAX modem to get a copy of a Beta Test agreement for a CDROM cache I printed the FAX, signed it, then scanned it to send it back!

The price of hard disks is falling, and I could get a second 452Mb drive for $100 less than the one I have, but decided that since using the C++ compiler from the CD will free about 40Mb from the disk, I don't really need to get another one until the next price drop ... I have 75Mb free on G:, and I'll be able to move some things over to F: once I erase the compiler.

I'm looking forward to the disk cache, but I hope it does not take up so much low memory that I can no longer run some of my games!