Blue

IF

"If you want me then take me; maybe you could break me like no one could"

-- unknown

New radiator/hoses for the truck

That took maybe an hour max. Stupid easy! 6 bolts and some hose clamps, pull out the old crappy radiator and in with the new.

Add some new hoses and done!

Friday

I'm working half a day today so I can put a new radiator in the truck. It must have a pinhole leak somewhere about mid level, because it won't hold more than about half level of coolant.

It's not even running above the correct temp, but it probably would if it was hotter out.

I also bought new upper/lower hoses and heater hoses. If you're going to drain the coolant you might as well replace all the hoses.

Tomorrow night I have a big champagne/pj party with 40+ people showing up. It should be fun.

I've been trying to stay a bit later at the office and go through some practice tests for the pto agent exam. They seem the best way to learn some of these obscure patent laws/rules.

Working on patent prosecutions has helped the studying...something to relate to I guess.

Jeanette Winterson

"Our lives don't fragment in the handy postmodern way of zero responsibility. Life is not bits of colored glass, some dark, some bright. Life has continuity, and continuity brings responsibility. If we can't answer to ourselves, we have to answer to others."

Firm, computers

The new firm job is interesting. I finished my first office action the other day, and started working on a new case. I have about 4 AO's to do and somewhere in the next couple weeks I'll write a patent.

It looks like the big secret to this silly test is to do old questions/tests about a million times until you have them memorized. At least that is what the PTO test discussion group I joined has to say.

I have an office and a view of the mountains, which works for me. I come in about 10am and skip all the Boulder traffic both on the way in and out.

About halfway into day one some network issue kicked one of the partners off of the file server, which I guess has been going on for about 3 years! I ran some protocol monitoring software and found a kerberos authentication problem with the domain controller, which caused the local machines to get kicked off the network shared drives when the kerberos ticket expired after 10 hours and the local client LSA couldn't find the DC to renew the ticket.

The 'fix' for the last few years was to remember to log off the domain and log back in at lunch, thereby renewing the encryption ticket. After that I got voted the new IT guy, which is probably good because it was being done by one of the other partners, who should probably be billing the crap out of some company instead of fucking around with computers anyway.

My first OA (office action) was an easy 101 rejection. That's a statutory matter rejection. In the USA you can patent almost anything, but there are some things you can't get a patent on. Those items are called non-statutory subject matter, and specifically you can't get a patent on things like computer calculations that don't have any real world result. I just had to rewrite a method claim to include a post data processing real world action, and that was it.

Ok, back to the real world.... the truck has a fuel line leak. It's not horrible, but it's bad enough that I've been trying to fix it. Ideally I'd buy a pre-formed fuel line with the fittings already there, but after chasing down what I was told was the part to get, it ended up being a no-go. After buying some tube bender and flare kit, and after the parts guy sold me the wrong tubing, I need to start over and fix that thing in the AM tomorrow. Other than that, just helping someone install a ceiling fan, and running by Karen's place to pick up a external USB hard drive I let her.

I bought a dog door so Thomas can go out and bark at squirrels anytime he wants to. This beats wondering if he is dying to go pee on some weeds while I'm working down in Boulder. I haven't put it in yet, but that's another thing that has to be done this weekend.

My workouts have been going ok, though this AM I felt a bit nauseous after the cardio. I have a somewhat common genetic error of the UDP-glucuronosyltransferase gene that causes Hyperbilirubinemia. Sometimes it makes me nauseous when I exercise. Usually this means I need to go eat a steak or hamburger or something. That seems to help.

Overheard

"In my next life I'm coming back as a rich guy with a big cock."

Loser

Well, strike TWO on the Patent Bar exam.

I start at the firm tomorrow anyway, but I still need to figure out what I'm doing wrong in studying for this test.

Kiss

Mail order bride

'vacation' comes to an end

We're back from the cabin...no Internet there. Tomorrow I'm flying back to good old CO.

I spent quite a bit of time studying, which is probably a good thing. The patent bar is next Monday and I'm supposed to start at the firm next Tuesday.

Summer is coming to an end, and I need to seriously think about finishing some of these outside house projects. I guess the lazy days of summer couldn't last forever.

Sometimes spending this much family time is like 'being a worn out old whore, with your uterus ready to fall out', as Hank would say. It's mostly good, though.

I tried hard not to eat like each day was my last meal, and I'm looking forward to some decent gym workouts again. Also Thomas the dog -- I miss the furry fucker.