Replacement Corningware

The square ones are 1L, with the part number A-1-B on one handle.

Avoid the "Spice Of Life" pattern, which seems to be slightly different in size and is shown with semiclear lids rather than the soft white lids. The white lid is too loose on it.

The round ones are "grab-its"

Deleting a wireless connection in windows 7

For some reason, I couldn't figure out how to do this on my own. Due to my changing the settings at my router, but keeping the same network name, the setup for my WiFi on this laptop no longer worked. Under properties for the connection, I couldn't change the relevant setting. I wanted to just delete it and let the laptop find it anew.

The answer was in the Network and Sharing Center the whole time. In the blue side bar, for some reason invisible to me before, is an option for "Manage Wireless Networks" which pops up a new screen that shows all the WiFi network configurations that were entered so far. There was my bad connection, and right clicking on it got me a "Delete" option. Victory! Then my current network was redetected and I was able to set it up correctly.

Why must ModelSim Suck?

Only in the windows or linux world is it reasonable to expect the user to hunt down all the required libraries to do a simulation. Which is to say it is reasonable, I guess, in this unfair world.

Anyhow, when doing a ModelSim on my Actel ProAsic3e design, my module used a primitive, which consequently required the proasic3e library to simulate. To get ModelSim to know where the library was, it required two nonintuitive steps. First, I had to use the vmap command on the ModelSim console to map the name "proasic3e" to the physical library file. This also required that I figure out where it was hidden on my system, which I would never have been able to do without hints from various forum threads. Secondly, I had to specify the path name with forward rather than windows (backwards) slashes. The resulting vmap command is:

vmap proasic3e C:/Actel/Libero_v8.6/Designer/lib/modelsim/precompiled/vhdl/proasic3e

Now, "proasic3e" appears on the library tab and everything compiles and works.

Sequencer work

Misc links to remember for future steps of compiling my sequencer demo:

The page which answered the question about whether processes in testbenches are repeating:

http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/31.php

The page which showed that the fuction conv_to_std_logic_vector seemed to demand a variable rather than an integer or other signal:

http://www.quest4tech.net/hardware/vhdl/techniques/

And some info about variables in VHDL:

http://www.gmvhdl.com/variable.htm

An illustrative public debate about the hazards of using asynchronous signals for a state machine.

http://www.fpgarelated.com/usenet/fpga/show/94294-1.php

The Actel PDF about the EDAC RAM:

http://www.actel.com/documents/EDAC_71_AN.pdf

The first hit on my search for information about the Actel RAM4K9 primitive used by Waltero and others:

http://www.kxcad.net/actel_designer/actel_designer_online_help/ACTgenIII%20files/a3_ProASIC3E_RAM4k9.htm

Refi Notes

Notes on the paths chosen to date:

Wells Fargo, despite being Wells Fargo, seems to match my needs well:

https://www.wellsfargo.com/mortgage/home-improvement/products

Loan app or request consultation? Frankly, I should just start with loan app since the choice that I want is right there:
https://mortgage.wellsfargo.com/affinity/shortForm.wfm
https://mortgage.wellsfargo.com/affinity/contact.wfm

Here's the info on Loanfax. Produced a nice list of links to very local standard mortgages, no choice for home renovation:

http://www.loanfax.com/index.htm

Two of the leading rates were Apex and Bancstar, both of which don't seem to have a lot of review info online (poor sign?) Bancstar lists renovation as one of their front page choices, Apex not.

http://www.bancstarmortgage.com/
http://www.apexhomeloans.com/About-Apex-Home-Loans.html

Not surprisingly, a calculator on loanfax showed that the interest to be paid on a $250K loan over 30 years is $212K! for 15 years half so.

The last state assessment that I got was 188K, which seems to have gone down. Clearly they adjusting for the economy, boo! My 2009 county tax bill was based on an assessment of $254K. My 2008 state assessment for 2008 and the next projected two years showed assessments of 236K, 254K, and 272K.

According to my 2009 tax statements, in 2009 I paid $2.6K in pricipal, $6.2K in interest, and my balance was $120.5K

In 2008 my ARM ajusted up to 5.6% from 4.75%, but I'm sure that it has adjusted down since then. In April 2010 it adjusted from 4.625% to 3.75%!!!!!

The wood floors installed

The floor installed in the nursery is:

Armstrong Danville Strip Honey Oak 2 1/4" 463212

see: http://www.truehardwoods.com/catalog/item/7115242/7242362.htm

The comperable square edge version, which sounds like what we got installed in the rest of the house, is

Armstrong Portland Strip Honey Oak 2 1/4" 462114

see: http://www.flooringwarehousedirect.com/armstrong_portland_strip_oak_34_x_2_14_solid_hardwood_flooring__honey.php

Drive failing

The BSOD error provided by the XPS is STOP Error 0x0000006f Session3_initialization_failed. Here are the first two results from googling it:

http://forums.techarena.in/windows-xp-support/867056.htm
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/764365-session3_initialization_failed-bsod.html

They suggested trying Safe Mode to search for removed drivers, but in fact the drive on the PC makes a sickening thudding sound when I started in Safe Mode, so the reason why it can't find the drivers is physical and it was unable to complete Safe Mode startup.

I'm planning on getting around this by buying a new drive and cloning my working XPS onto it. The existing drive is a Seagate ST3160023AS, which is a 160G 7200RPM SATA 8MB Cache drive. I could buy that one still (the WD3160318AS seems equivalent also), or buy the WD equivalent, which seems to be part number WD1600AAJS. The advantage of the WD drive is that I can download their clone tool, which worked great the last time I tried it in the W98 era:

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119