Sunday Sunday

Posted by Thomas Sun, 28 Aug 2005 19:58:29 +0000

Ever looked at yourself in the mirror and asked yourself the question, “Like a gantt chart?”?

Haven’t done much today. Too much ebay. Read a bunch while trying to figure out if I can do shared fibre channel disks under raid 5 under lvm under gfs. If anybody besides Cole understands that, then you get a cookie. Rearranged the corner of my living room that is my “office”. Moved one table to the other side of the other table. Now I feel weird, ’cause my workstation moved like 3 feet. The move was so that I could increase the density of stuff, but as I’ve recently learned, more density does not always equal betterness. I need some nerdy/geeky bookends for my workstation. The floor is now open to suggestions. That is all.

Posted in General | 4 Comments

Older than me wesleyites

Posted by Thomas Sat, 27 Aug 2005 01:05:51 +0000

I stumbled across a veritable mother load of old wesleyite blogs. I have known for a while that there existed several blogs linked to from Mindy’s site, but only now have I fully delved into them to find such people as tmac, phat allen, goat, mel, etc. Good to know. I’ll try and track them for a while and if they’re any good, I’ll keep on reading. :) But I must say that the topics that they all just posted about are quite disturbing. They are all having kids. Guy & Abi just had one. As well as Matt Hammer. Looks like the Bakers have one on the way as well. Personally I had no idea. Crazy that the people just a bit older than me are all going to be or already are parents. I would guess that a bunch of those people already kept in touch, but hopefully they can stay a bit more in touch through blogs. It’s a new and interesting medium with which to communicate, but it definitely takes some effort to keep up writing on a regular basis. I haven’t checked the old wesley yahoo group in a while, but there didn’t seem to be much there the last time that I looked. Maybe this will replace it some.

Apocalypse Now === F*cked up movie; good, but f’ed up

Posted in General | 4 Comments

Engineers

Posted by Thomas Thu, 25 Aug 2005 22:12:20 +0000

Have I ever mentioned how much I miss being around engineers?

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Credit card applications

Posted by Thomas Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:12:35 +0000

Whomever made me think that it was going to be hard for me to get a credit card after college was dead wrong. I get one like everyday. Don’t you get it people?!? I don’t need anymore credit cards, nor do I need to make any balance transfers from my overloaded credit cards (as I have none). So, to all the creditors reading this, check my credit history, get a clue, and stop sending me spam!

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Butcher’s Block

Posted by Thomas Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:34:32 +0000

You think that $79.99 is too much? I think I might get one of these. I need some semi-nice knives anyway…

http://www.csbcommodities.com/

Posted in General | 4 Comments

Now I remember

Posted by Thomas Sun, 21 Aug 2005 12:28:00 +0000

Now I remember… Now I remember probably why I don’t talk so much. And I remember why I don’t like books so much (Because I seem to have a propensity to not read them all the way through. Then I feel like I’m not being fiscally responsible.).

Song in my head all day Friday: Dave Matthews Band – Typical Situation

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Not much

Posted by Thomas Sun, 21 Aug 2005 00:22:02 +0000

Watched a bunch of West Wing today. Haven’t done too much stuff. These made me laugh out loud. Drew, definitely need to check them out. Marc, you should give this a try.

I dunno if J-Rod reads this, so if you do, then send me a cd or something of Kellie Shehan(sp), else, someone smack him in the back of the head and tell him that I still want it.

tackerm is a jerkstor for camping on a bunch of auctions. I really, really want to jack up all of the prices on all of the auctions that he’s bid on to just below what it looks like his max bid is. muahahha! (I’m in the market because my QLA2100 just isn’t going to cut it :/).

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Nose

Posted by Thomas Fri, 19 Aug 2005 21:47:57 +0000

It all started a couple of days ago. A couple of innocent sneezes during the day. Now, I don’t normally sneeze that much, and if I do, I don’t usually put in any thought about it. Although I do have a photic sneeze reflex. Look it up… Anyhoo, woke up yesterday or the day before with some nasal blockage preventing some breathing through a nostril, along with a scratch throat. I figured that it was allergies. Now I’ve got a little runny nose and a little drainage. I don’t seem to be getting as much sleep as of late as I probably should be. Which seems hard for me to alleviate, because I haven’t been getting that tired at night. Then it’s like 2am and I figure that I should go to bed. I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep (which is rather messed up). I guess that I’ll try and catch up this weekend and nurse my allergies or sickness, but I make no guarantees. Yes, yes. Drink plenty of fluids, get plenty of rest, take medicine. Gotcha. At least it is the weekend so if I get worse I won’t have to take any time off.

Crap, while reading about the photic sneeze reflex, I learned that not only can I not be a combat pilot because I don’t have 20/20 vision (I already knew that), I also would be pwned because I sneeze. Bummer.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

The Pickup Vol. 2

Posted by Thomas Tue, 16 Aug 2005 01:46:19 +0000

Sorry that it has been so long. Between the network being down here at the apt since Thursday, being gone for the weekend, and generally not having any time at all while I was home to do much more than be with the fam, I am just now getting back to this.

So, let’s start with the Cliff’s Notes of the comments. Mindy says stay true and step out. Ben says ,“don’t worry, thomas. have faith that some girl will see you for who you are and love you and marry you. trust God, it’ll happen.” Marcus says that even the experts say they don’t know wtf is the right thing to do. He goes on with wisdom beyond his years by stating (pretty much) that if things were fair, then “every girl would be all up ons”. Marc says don’t throw rocks at girls and burn their houses down with candles that spell their name (my paraphrase). C-to-the-a-to-the-llum sez buy a puppy and go to a strip club (note this fortune). Chad says don’t listen to him and talk about computers all the time.

All too often I’ve heard guys relate how they pretty much have no idea how they got hooked up with their significant other. This helps me none.

For you see that I feel that I have done my best to stay true to myself in my pursuit of women only to get in return ::matt foley::JACK SQUAT!::matt foley::

Everyone pretty much says that you have to be yourself. Exactly who that person is is a highly debated topic. During either ENGR111 or 112 we had to do these personality-ish surveys. Not the Keirsey one, different, more expensive ones. They dealt more with how to communicate with co-workers, the best management environment for you to work in, etc. They made some distinctions between a natural behavior and an adapted one. For example, their program drew the conclusion that my tendancy to motivate others is less a natural one and more an adapted one, meaning that my natural tendancy to get your butt in gear is less than the tendancy that you might actually come into contact with.

So in taking this notion of natural and adapted, I tried to extrapolate that if everyone is capable of doing pretty much anything (say to the generic extremes both very, very good and bad things), then what really does define us? If we are defined by our actions, and in certain circumstances we can do atrocious things (the Holocaust, for example), then we are defined by nothing because we can do everything.

Can everyone reading this can assume that the real and true Thomas can, under the proper conditions, be charming enough to get some girl’s phone number? We can all agree that this action would be an adapted behavior, correct? Something that Thomas was always capable of. Then anything else that Thomas is capable of would then be part of the true Thomas. Doesn’t that truly muddy the water of who Thomas really is? Doesn’t that essentially make Thomas undefined?

I think that Max would argue that the true Thomas is independant of outward appearance. Which I would say is only partially true. Do my glasses define me? Would I be any different if I wore contacts? Would I be more appealing if everyone could see my eyes better to try and read them? Do my shorts define me? Do my t-shirts? Am I a fundamentally different person if I shaved everyday and everyday wore business casual? Perhaps business casual wouldn’t denote a fundamental shift in my being, but I would hotly argue that it would indicate a paradigm shift. At the very least an acceptance of a new stage in life. I would argue that that outward sign correlates directly to an inward acceptance. Acceptance that things can and never will be the save again. Letting go of things of the past. Fundamental changes in priorities. Just plain fundamental changes. People might argue that the clothes don’t make the man, but I am a firm believer that clothing maintains a direct relationship to personal and fundamental things of that person. If a girl wears flip flops instead of heels. The kind of glasses she wears. How much makeup she has on. Whether she has her nails done. Whether she’s had a peticure. How conservatively she dresses. How her hair is done. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this. But I bet that there’s one of you out there that thinks that I have my girl picked out to a tee. ;) And maybe I do. And maybe I don’t.

Maybe that’s why I hate this game so much is that I just don’t think that I’ll ever win. That’s pretty much what everybody said wasn’t it? Just wait for it. You say, “If you build it, they will come”. And I say, “build what?”. And you say “If you build it, they will come”. And then I have to build a baseball field in the middle of my corn field.

I’ve tried playing the game every way that I know how. I’ve even tried playing the game by not playing at all (Would you like to play a game of chess?). Nothing seems to change. So if I am so infintely picky, and we then assume that this ficticious woman is also infinitely picky, then can anyone figure out the probability of hookup of two infinitely picky people? I look at my odds in CS and I look at them now, and I just give up. Sorry, Ben, I can’t trust and I’ve lost [some] faith.

Sleep awaits. Maybe someday my prose will get less disjointed and generally better overall…

Posted in Women | 9 Comments

Step Uncle

Posted by Thomas Thu, 11 Aug 2005 01:37:20 +0000

I just realized that I’m going to be a step-uncle-type-person on Saturday… how weird is that?

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White Board UP!

Posted by Thomas Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:59:27 +0000

I got the white board hung tonight, with the help of a couple of nails, some speaker wire, two pci slot covers, and some bubble wrap. Last night I had the idea from some home makeover show to nail into the top cap of the wall to hang up my whiteboard. Looked at it this morning and realized/remembered that I have quite a large pseudo crown molding. Since this “crown molding” has a small strip of molding about 6–8″ below the ceiling, I figured that putting nails in at the very top of it would work great because they won’t be able to see the hole from standing on the ground. So, great, no holes to have to fill later. Has some small guage speaker wire, since I didn’t have any string. Ripped it apart to form 2 strands. Then bent the pci slot covers into a J to hold the white board. Fastened the wire to the pci slot covers. Then tied the wire to the nails and voila, a hanging white board. Then I had to make it so that the top would stay against the wall. Used some other semi-stiff wire that I had to make the board “stick” to the wire. Was worried about getting metal stuff on the wall (which wound up happening some before I fixed it, but hopefully not too bad), so I used a bubble wrapped envelope to keep the pci covers from contacting the wall. Not too bad for an engineer. :)

Too bad I don’t have a camera, else I’d just show you. :( I guess I’ll have to work on that… after I pay off the washer and dryer.

On a more serious note, I’ll try and respond to the comments given graciously by you guys about “The Pickup”. Hopefully I will get that out tomorrow, but since I’m heading out on Friday, if I don’t get it done, then it may be Sunday night or Monday night. Let’s hope that it’s tomorrow. :)

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Papa Johns, Home Depot and a White Board

Posted by Thomas Wed, 10 Aug 2005 00:09:53 +0000

So, as luck would have it the two things that I wanted to do tonight happened be right next to each other. How convienent that Home Depot is right next to a Papa Johns? So, in my lust for a 4×8′ sheet of white board, I went off to Home Depot. Before I left, I measured the Yukon. Over 4′ of cargo space in the width direction. Not quite enough space in the height direction… more on that later. So, I finally tracked down their sheets of this stuff. A 2×4′ sheet would have cost something like $7. The 4×8′ sheet costs something like $11. So, I went with the big sheet. Pondered having them cut it then and there, but figured that I would regret it later. About this time I figured that I would call ahead to PJ, so that I could pay out at HD, pick up my pizza at PJ, and then go home to eat it. Well, they don’t like it if you don’t have a local phone number. The wankers. So, I paid out at HD, drove to PJ, made my order and waited. Read some of the USA Today that was in the store. Oil doesn’t look to good in the near future. Well, bad for me, good for people who own lots of oil. Anyway… oh, and there was this crazy lady that came in, screaming about how the guy was rude on the phone and how she wanted to talk to his manager and all of this. Makes me think that you get more with honey than vinegar… I digress more. So, after 12 minutes, I got my pizza and took it home. Good $13 (or however much pizza). Then End. Oh, I almost forgot. Laid the back seats down, but essentially had to duck the entire drive home. I guess they didn’t figure many people carrying 4×8′ sheets of stuff when they designed it. Ah, fond memories of many a mission trip to Mexico… ::Single tear::

P.S. I’m taking bids (suggestions really) for how best to hang this on the wall without making ginormous holes in the wall. Also remember that I am lacking in the power tool dept… I could buy power tools, but I’d rather buy techie tools…

Posted in General | 6 Comments

Gross!

Posted by Thomas Mon, 08 Aug 2005 20:54:02 +0000

I just poured most of a half a gallon of milk down the drain that had a “Best if sold by” date of Jul 09! That may be a record for me, as I’m usually pretty good about these things…

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The Pickup

Posted by Thomas Mon, 08 Aug 2005 02:03:21 +0000

I ran across some guy’s dissertation on “The Art of the Pickup”. I’m sure that there are those of you reading who will immediately balk at this *cough*MAX*cough*. Just hold on for a sec and hear me out. Some of the things that this guy mentions I have actually been kicking around (independently and beforehand of reading this).

I guess mainly what I have been wondering is since I’ve moved out here and all, that nobody knows me, that I don’t have this pre-existing set of friends and possible hindrances due to those friendships (in terms of keeping friendships as opposed to the possibility of ruining them), that can I appear to be someone who I’m not quite. Take for example the couple of guys that I went to the concert with. They are very outgoing, boisterous kinds of fellows. Like if I acted as the person that I expect women to respond well to, would I have a better chance? I think that we all know what type of results I mustered in CS.

It reminds me of the movie “Hitch”. There is a line in there where Hitch says something like “ ‘You’ is a very fluid concept right now.”. In the same way that Hitch asks Allegra Cole if she would have ever noticed Albert had he not stood up in the meeting, I beg the question, is always being yourself truly enough in the beginning to set things in motion?

Somehow I don’t think that I’m going to like the comments on this one… :/

Maybe in my mind the question that it boils down to is who is the person that you think that you are? Who is Thomas? And unlike virtually every other friendship and relationship that I’ve ever had (and against probably every bit of advice that I’ve ever gotten or read on the subject), how much do I have to change, while staying Thomas at the exact same time, to achieve what I want to achieve, a girlfriend and a wife?

Well it’s 2am and the time is finally starting to hit me… Comment away…

Posted in Women | 10 Comments

Apple Pie

Posted by Thomas Sun, 07 Aug 2005 22:27:45 +0000

MickeyD’s Apple Pies… four of them. Brings back many fond memories of many late night trips to McDonald’s with good friends…

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Cookie’s Fortune

Posted by Thomas Sun, 07 Aug 2005 14:43:56 +0000

A financial investment will yield returns beyond your hopes.

Hmmm… does that say what I think that it says?

‘Bout to go to work. Since I’m flying out on Friday, I figure that I don’t particularly want to loose those three or so hours of pay, so I’ll pick it up today all at once instead of sometime spread out this week. Watched “The Ladykillers” last night. I saw the original in my music in film class, so I knew pretty much what was going to happen. Odd that Tom Hanks was in it… Disappointed that there wasn’t a director’s commentary. Watched “Blazing Saddles” as well yesterday. Good flick. Thanks for the thought, Ben. I’ve also got “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” as well as “The Life of Brian”. We’ll see about watching one of them tonight. Well that actually depends if one of my network cards hasn’t bittent the dust… Also got through some of my book yesterday. It seems pretty good, but is really too early to tell. Picked up some Chinese for lunch today at a little place near by, hence the cookie’s fortune. I seemed to have bought too much food (my traditional meal of sweet and sour chicken). We’ll see how well the chicken and rice keep. Maybe I can stretch a couple of meals out of my $7.75.

laters

Posted in General, Movies | 3 Comments

Mosquito bites

Posted by Thomas Sat, 06 Aug 2005 21:37:12 +0000

Got my first two Georgian mosquito bites last night. Got them while standing around outside before a live concert. For you see that several guys from work were going to go see this band, O.A.R.. Well, actually I’m not exactly sure about how they spell their name, whether I have the correct capitalization and punctuation, but that is neither here nor there. I don’t know this because I had never heard of them before, and now I’ve heard them live. They are pretty good. A really relaxed type of music, not mad or anything. So, these guys from work asked me and just said yes, without any real hesitation (which is somewhat odd, but eh…). So, while the opening acts were on, we were standing around outside the venue, and I got bit a couple of times. Anyhoo, it was a good concert and I got to go out with a couple of friends. Good times…

Posted in General | 3 Comments

Fried

Posted by Thomas Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:40:06 +0000

So apparently a while back I came a little closer to being fired than I would like to have been. Unbeknownst to me, I had a review at the end of my 3 month contract. Emails went around to the appropriate people, seeking reviews. Between what essentially boils down to clerical errors and some miscommunication, I was almost let go. But it was pretty quickly found out, and settled, all without my knowning. Good to know that they do in fact like me and want to keep me around a little while longer. :)

Watched “Cast Away” last night and the commentary tonight. I really liked it, but I bet there will be an ensuing flame war about how people didn’t like it.

Essentially impulse bought a book this morning from Amazon, Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations. It would be nice if I could plow through it this weekend. We’ll see.

Posted in General, Movies | 5 Comments

Linkplayer2 & NSLU2

Posted by Thomas Wed, 03 Aug 2005 01:16:25 +0000

Since I’ve been looking into buying an Avel Linkplayer2, I have found out that you can get the Linksys NSLU2 to act as a media server for the Linkplayer. That way I could have my external connected to it, to serve as a normal fileserver as well as serve up content for the linkplayer, without having to run their software on a linux box nor have to connect the drive directly to the linkplayer. Fun stuff.

The weird thing is that in thinking about this I have a craving to fab essentially the same thing as the NSLU2, but with 1394b and gigE. How nice would that be? You could have raid 5 over 800Mbit firewire, with hotswapability due to CHEAP ata drives in firewire enclosures. ATA drives are freaking dirt cheap nowadays after rebates. You would even gain some reliability if you used different drive vendors as they would be less prone to crash at the same time. Everything would have its own dc power supply. No noisy fans or high current draw.

Maybe I should take up pcb fab as a hobby?

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments

Le Jazz

Posted by Thomas Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:37:36 +0000

I am definitely digging the John Coltrane and the Miles Davis.

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Mix CD

Posted by Thomas Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:20:42 +0000

I have been meaning to get some input for a “makes thomas smile” mix cd. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Jamiroquai – Canned Heat
NERD – LAPDANCE
O-Zone – Dragostea din tei
Usher Featuring Ludacris & Lil Jon – Yeah

The criteria is that it has to make me crack a smile. :)

Posted in General | 7 Comments