In my heart

Last night we were living outside as usual. It had cooled a bit and a stiff cool breeze began blowing, so we moved inside for the first time in a week. We had a wonderful discussion about the state of the world (worrying) and what we might do about it beyond working for freedom in our KDE work. I think I'm not alone in being concerned about visiting Austria since politics there turned "populist". Since I'm living in a country where the same is true at least on the Federal level, that might seem hypocritical. Perhaps it is, but I'm not the only one working to expand the scope of people we welcome, rather than the reverse. I believe the most fortunate--including me--should pay the highest taxes, to provide public goods to all: excellent schools, medical and social care, fine public transport, free libraries, and free software.

We can only do that last bit well with a healthy KDE community. This means uniting around our goals, contributing to the community along with the software; by creating good documentation, helping promote news, contributing timely information for release announcements, joining a working group or the e.V. itself and most important: living up to our Code of Conduct. Our Code of Conduct is one of the best and most positive in free software, and is a key reason I came to KDE and stayed to contribute. It is of little value, however, unless we occasionally re-read it and resolve to personally hold ourselves to a high standard of conduct, and in addition, daring to step up to help resolve situations where it requires courage to do so. This is an important bit:

If you witness others being attacked, think first about how you can offer them personal support. If you feel that the situation is beyond your ability to help individually, go privately to the victim and ask if some form of official intervention is needed. 

Similarly you should support anyone who appears to be in danger of burning out, either through work-related stress or personal problems.

It is sometimes very difficult and discouraging to confront distressing situations, when those whom you respect and even love deeply disappoint. However if we are to grow and thrive as a family, and we are a huge family, this must be done.

I've recently stolen from Boud and Irina's huge library In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth by J.P. Mallory. A bit old, but a lovely survey of Eurasia up to historical times. Just this morning with my breakfast I read:

In what did the Proto-Indo-Europeans believe, or, to use their own words, to what did they 'put in their hearts'? This archaic expression is still preserved in a roundabout way in English where the Latin verb credo 'I believe' has been borrowed to fashion our English creed. 

After our talk last night, this passage prompted me to write today.


More photos from Deventer:

Flower cheese!

Sage, parsley

Sunset

IPA even in Deventer!

Problem redimensionated into challenge, thence into success

Problem: our Dish DVR died. And it died before I backed up the content, and that content was hundreds of old Doctor Who episodes I was collecting until I could watch in some kind of decent order.

Since it would briefly come back to life if allowed to rest for awhile unplugged, I bought a backup hard drive of the proper sort (with its own power supply), and plugged it in. However, the DVR died before backing up commenced.

This DVR is leased, so Dish sent along a new one, asking that I return the broken one within 10 days. Yesterday a technician showed up to be sure that everything was working, since the new machine had taken quite long to get a watchable image. I asked him if it was possible to move the old hard drive into the new machine and do the backup, before sending the old machine back? He said yes, although he couldn't do it for us.

So, new challenge: remove the old hard drive from the old DVR. I found a wikibook about the DVR here: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VIP_922/Dish_Network. There the author says,

With no A/C power connected - from the old 922, pull the internal hard drive and set it aside. To do this remove 4, back cover screws (black,) then slide the cover back about 1/2 inch and tilt upwards to remove.

Well now, here was my first problem. Screws, no biggie. But "slide the cover back"? It simply would not move for me. However, teamwork to the rescue. My husband Bob used the straight-slot screwdriver and pried with a bit more power than I would have used, and slide, it did. From there on out, the problem was redimensionated (thank you genii for that beautiful term!) and it was only a matter of more screws, unhooking the power and motherboard connection, and sliding out.

After using my husband again to help me slide out the TV cabinet and photograph and then remove the DVR hookups, I used the same procedure again. Remove the cover, then the HD, and then switched the old HD into its place. I left off the cover, and then Bob hooked up the new machine again, and we turned it on to wait. After the backup hard drive was plugged in, this slow beast restarted again, but we had a new option: backup. Just to be safe, we selected only the Doctor Who eps. If there is room once that's done, I'll select the rest of what I want. The backup is now proceeding, and the readout reports that it will take another 10 hours. OMG, usb is slow!

So, redimensionating is cool. I'm going to try to remember to do it more often. Also, many thanks to the dish tech and wikibook author who both shared their information freely, and my husband who supplied support, muscle, and didn't give up!