AwkwardDog.com

I’ve recently switched to the Safari on Leopard, frustrated by the lack of decent PDF plugin for Camino. Lately, I’ve noticed that my cookies keep disappearing. (I usually notice this when I start seeing those annoying snap.com previews or the Intellitxt pop-ups again, meaning that the opt-out cookies are gone.) So I searched a bit, trying to find the cause. Turns out that this is somehow caused filing bugs at Apple’s own Bug Reporter. I just verified this by logging in to check the status of my most recent bug (where opening the Dashboard results in a kernel panic with the message: “pmap_flush_tlbs() timeout: cpu 1 failing to respond to interrupts“), and sure enough, all of my cookies were deleted. I guess it’s time to switch back to Camino. Or maybe I should just switch back to Linux…
 

 

It turns out that the Tascam and DigiDesign plugins have been causing other problems on Leopard. For the past few weeks, whenever I launched VMWare Fusion, a folder labeled “vmx” would bounce endlessly in the Dock. A clever VMWare employee has traced this problem to the DigiDesign CoreAudio plugin:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/822634#822634

Removing the Tascam US-122l driver solves this problem on my MacBook.

Apparently I’m not the only one having problems with the UserEventAgent and coreaudiod processes hanging on Leopard:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6075755&tstart=0
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-377888.html

The problem in my case can be traced to the drivers for my Tascam US-122L. I emailed Tascam and received this reply: “We have found an incompatibility with the US122L on Mac OSX Leopard and are working on correcting this right away. We will post any update or information here as soon as possible: http://www.tascam.com/details;9,15,70,19.html. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

At least they’re acknowledging the problem. In the meantime, I’ve uninstalled the drivers and the UserEventAgent/coreaudiod problems have gone away. (With the Tascam drivers installed, UserEventAgent would almost always show up in the Activity Monitor as “not responding”.) I also haven’t seen any “Sound will not be available” warnings from VMWare Fusion recently, so that might have been related to this problem.

[Updated 3/11/2008] There are updated drivers and firmware available on the German Tascam site. I’ve installed them, and so far I haven’t seen any problems with the coreaudiod or UserEventAgent processes.

I’m the luckiest guy in the world.  Not only do I have an amazing new bride, I also have an amazing new snare drum.  This beauty is an engagement gift from Callie, made by Ronn Dunnett. 

“Milkwood” is Ronn’s proprietary name for some lightweight wood.  Whatever it is, it looks amazing and sounds even better.  Check out the attention to detail with the color-coordinator strainer ribbons: 

Instead of using serial number, Ronn names every drum he builds.  This one is named for my lovely wife:

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For our recent wedding, my wife Callie hired an amateur wedding photographer who was looking to build a portfolio.  Here are some of the results: 

All of these pictures were taken by Elley Ho.  Despite this being one of her first paying wedding jobs, she did an amazing job.  If you’re looking for a photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can contact Elley at elley@elleyphotography.com.  

(Yes, this is the same Tony Williams who played with Miles Davis on E.S.P. and Nefertiti.)

Exciting news here. I’m being considered for inclusion in the Cambridge Who’s Who Among Executives and Professionals in Teaching and Education. Take that, Mr. Madkins. I’m somebody now.

I may just be a graduate student, but it’s good to finally be recognized. As the letter says, “inclusion is considered by many as the single highest mark of achievement”:

Sure, there are some people who would call this a scam. Not me, though. I’m certainly not going to call this a unconscionable fraud. (After all, they might sue me if I pointed out that fact.) No, I’m just going to bask in this adulation a little longer, then call up Cambridge Who’s Who with my credit card ready. That free listing in Cambridge Who’s Who Among Executives and Professionals in Teaching and Education will be the best $900 I’ve ever spent.

A few months ago, I started shaving with a straight razor.  Since then, I’ve bought a few vintage razors off of eBay, and I’m in the process of restoring them.  I’m currently working on a Puma razor that I found in an antique shop:

I’m almost finished with a Dubl Duck Goldedge, which has cleaned up very nicely.  It was advertised on eBay like this:

With a little Maas and a Dremel, it already looks like this:

For anybody interested in straight razors, I strongly recommend getting a copy of Lynn Abrams’s DVD: The World of Straight Razor Shaving.  If you don’t want to spend the $20 (though you should!), a free guide is available here: http://homepage.mac.com/drmoss/FileSharing26.html.  The forums at http://www.straightrazorplace.com are a great place to ask questions.  For restoration, the best place to start is with Bill Ellis’s CD-ROM.

When I registered this domain name, I only had one awkward dog in mind: my labradoodle Teddy.  Since then, another awkward dog has joined us.  Here’s Franklin, a goldendoodle and Awkward Dog #2.  Both of these boys came to us as “rehomes” via the wonderful folks at http://www.idog.biz.

 

I’ll be using this space to ramble on about computers, math, books, music, cigars, razors, or anything else that piques my interest.