jrowe.org

I’m reworking my resume generation chain.
I have one base file for my resume and then I generate different formats from that one file. All automatically through Apache Ant. Now I’m reworking the toolchain so that I generate an XSL-FO document. Then I convert that to PDF, RTF, and XHTML. So far the PDF and RTF conversion is about halfway done.

The point of this script is to take meta-information about my personal coding projects and to create a set of nice HTML pages describing each project. I will be using Perl and XML for this.

K hit something on her drive in today and damaged the plastic underbody cowling causing it to drag along the ground. Since she was occupied and I have a lot of free time on my hands, she asked me to take a look at it and fix it. The first step was to cut off the damaged section. There was still a loose bit of the cowling that I thought might damage the tire, so I had to find someway to secure it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any cord or twine with me, not even in my truck. But K had some dental floss in the car, and I think that will work well.

Lessons Learned

• One should keep a small set of tools in every vehicle.
• An automotive emergency toolkit should have some twine, string, or paracord in it.
• A general purpose toolkit for the home should have some twine, string, or paracord in it.
• If cowling is damaged and one drives 20 minutes to fix it, one should be bring along twine, string, paracord, tape, glue, or epoxy in order to secure loose bits of cowling.

Additional Thanks

My Dad. Because whenever I have a problem like this, I stop to think “What would my Dad do?”.
And the answer is: the simplest, cheapest thing possible that will work. Which I think is a great thing to keep in mind.