Author Archives: Jim Vanderveen

About Jim Vanderveen

I'm a bit of a Renaissance man, with far too many hobbies for my free time! But more important than any hobby is my family. My proudest accomplishment has been raising some great kids! And somehow convincing my wife to put up with me since 1988. ;)

PL/SQL errors in Oracle packages

I can never remember how to get a list of compiler errors from Oracle PL/SQL packages, so here’s how… Continue reading

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“Sacramento Spotlight” magazine

I ran across an issue of Sacramento Spotlight Magazine, (SSM) which I had never seen before. Looks kind of like an arts/media-focused rendition of Sacramento Magazine. NB: this is not a compliment! Many of the articles seem to be puff … Continue reading

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Harry Potter discussion tomorrow night

The Sacramento Harry Potter Club and Meetup groups are going to get together at Naked Lounge in Sacramento to discuss the latest book in the series. See the event page for details, RSVP, etc.

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A touching story

A little bit of humor courtesy of “The Punk”. Thanks for the email, Becky! Here’s a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little girl and some construction workers that makes you believe that we CAN make a … Continue reading

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Is Harry a horcrux?

If you haven’t finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yet, don’t read this post!

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New game at home, “Candamir”

Last week I picked up a new game, Candamir: The First Settlers. I’ve played it a few times so far, and it’s pretty good. I thought I would share some analysis I’ve done on the tiles and movement cards.

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Crock pot BBQ’d beef

My wife got this great, easy recipe for BBQ’d beef from Judy Shields, one of her co-workers. Ingredients: – 2.5 lb beef roast (a pot roast worked very well for us) – 12 oz bottle of beer – 1/2 onion, … Continue reading

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My BoardGameGeek profile is active again!

I registered a profile on BoardGameGeek (BGG) back in February of 2004. At the time, I was using a dial-up connection which was only reaching about 30 kbit/s. This proved to be painfully slow for the BGG site, particularly when … Continue reading

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We have a dishwasher!

Remodel journal 2005-07-28 thru 07-31: (NB Somebody emailed asking why I dated these journal entries. I try to take pictures while I’m working, but I usually don’t have time/energy to write up a post or tweak and upload the photos … Continue reading

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Passive cooling strategies

I’m reading a useful-looking article (free PDF) in the August/September 2005 issue of Home Power discussing passive cooling. The third page has a sidebar titled, “Bioclimatic Graph with Cooling Strategies”, which gives suggestions for which type(s) of passive cooling system … Continue reading

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