Peter A. Bowen

I fixed it! – iMac CD Drive doesn’t work.

peter — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:04:22 +0000

I’m going to start a small series on fixing things. With three boys around the house, I’m pretty much always fixing something, and I hope that my adventures might be helpful to others.

Recently my iMac stopped reading optical disks. It acted like there was a disk in the drive, but the drive wasn’t spinning up and I couldn’t eject it. I tried all of the suggested options short of holding it sideways and shaking it. I tried the following:

1. Press the eject button (Duh!)
2. Hold down the mouse button while rebooting.
3. Reset the Pram (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379)
4. Reset the SMC (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964)
5. Use Disk Utility, select the CD drive and click Eject.

None of these worked, and finally, I found a solution. From a terminal session, execute the following:

drutil eject

It worked and I’m happily burning disks again! Hopefully this will help you too!

SQLDeveloper on Fedora 15

peter — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:16:30 +0000

Earlier this week, I had to install SQL Developer and I didn’t want to pull down the full SDK from Sun when I could use OpenJDK and all of the yum goodness that Fedora provides.

First I installed all of the OpenJDK packages ( SQL Developer claims to require a full JDK install )

I pulled down the RPM install from Oracle and it installed flawlessly. When I ran it though… nothing…

I dropped to the command line and ran sqldeveloper manually, and it couldn’t find the JDK.

I set it as /usr in ~/.sqldeveloper/jdk – which is consistent with the OpenJDK install from Fedora. (You could also set your JAVA_HOME to the same)

It still complained that java was a JRE and not a full JDK. I suppressed the JDK check by adding ‘SetSkipJ2SDKCheck true’ to /opt/sqldeveloper/sqldeveloper/bin/sqldeveloper.conf.

I fired it up and hurray! it worked. It works from the Activities screen too.

Running for the Board

peter — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:09:41 +0000

I’m running to be on the board of the LosAngeles Live steamers Railroad Museum. I thought I would share my statement to the membership on why I ran, and what I want to do.

This short note is to introduce myself, and ask for your consideration when making your choice for the board of directors next year. While I have been a member for a short time, I could not stand by when the list of nominees was short, and the call went out for volunteers to serve on the board. I have a business degree, helped to found another live steam organization in another state, get along with people, and generally have a can-do and pitch in attitude. If elected I would like to:

Improve Member Participation – I want to match member skills with work that needs to be done. I want members to feel good about their contribution, and feel like a real part of the group.
Improve communication – I want to improve the overall communication of de-facto information.
Increase Fellowship – We’re a group with a common interest, but some feel left out. I would like to improve the friendship within the group.

I am familiar with what is required, having served in other service organizations. I hope that you will choose me to represent you next year on the Board of Directors. Thank you for your consideration.

Cool Saw via Steve Cooley

peter — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:38:56 +0000

This afternoon, Steve Cooley pointed me to this really cool saw via his blog.

Here’s the link to the info on Bridge City’s Site

Live Steam Coal

peter — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:58:37 +0000

I couldn’t find a resource for live steam coal, so I’m going to create one. Feel free to let me know of any suppliers that you know – even if it’s just a guy that has a bunch in the back yard. Be sure to also let me know if the links die.

List of Live Steam Coal Suppliers

-Peter

Been away….

peter — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:44:24 +0000

Yeah, I’ve been away – Mostly on Facebook, but Facebook is so private that some of the things I want to share are not available to the search engines and the world at large. I’m back, shorter posts, but more often for sure…

-Peter

Facebook

peter — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:06:19 +0000

It’s official – I like Facebook. A bunch of my friends are jumping on, and it’s starting to get interesting. Now if they could figure out how to serve interesting ads, I might support them. I’m afraid though, that the bigger it gets, the more in the red it will go until it joins the legions of other dot bombs.

Please prove me wrong. Please figure it out – it has taken a long time to get my links and friends together. I really don’t want to have to do it again. If you are going to die though, please give me some notice so that I can at least grab everyone’s contact info. Thank you.

-Peter

Surfer Music

peter — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:29:53 +0000

I ran across these guys and I was surprised to see that surfer music is still alive. You can check them out at www.acousticsurfmusic.com

Workout

peter — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:19:34 +0000

I have a friend who posted on her first day of her new workout, which got me thinking about Boot Camp, and other diet fads, and here’s one I think I could do. Let me know if you want to sign up:

Los Angeles Diet
Give me your schedule and some money. Periodically I’ll have a weirdo stalk you as you walk to your car. I’ll be sure to rotate weirdos so that you don’t know whether it a hired weirdo or a real weirdo. For a little more, he can step up to your window at a light, and knock. If you get the window knock, I think I can throw in some weird phone calls for free. Fire and earthquakes are not included in the base package.

All of this would get your heart rate going, probably increase your metabolism, all while decreasing your appetite.

The other thing about this cool diet is that it works better for women than men. Ready to sign up?

-Peter

Gloves

peter — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:30:05 +0000

Sometimes gloves are the best thing when you need to keep your hands warm. How often do we find ourselves over-engineering the obvious.

Check out this gem from The Daily WTF…

-Peter