I’ve started getting into a routine for most, but not things. A few things linger and haven’t yet become second nature. One of those things is eating on the weekend. Weekday meals are at work, so there is reduced choice when it comes the multitude of restaurants in the surrounding cities. Plus there’s usually a group and usually someone who will make a decision of which cafe to go to. In Atlanta, I got into a pretty decent weekend eating routine wherein I could keep my weight constant, while eating what I wanted and felt full. Maybe I just stumbled upon the right combination of chicken; I dunno. Anyway, it totally seems to me that I have fewer fast food places to choose from, or maybe that’s just my perception. I was pretty happy with my Chick-fil-a and my Zaxbys. :) My substitute here is Popeye’s. Man, this post is super rambly. If anyone has any suggestions for non-fattening restaurants other than the ones I plan to hit (In-n-Out, Popeye’s, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell), I’m all ears.

Having virtually complete silence in the apartment is definitely a welcome change. For almost a whole week, I didn’t have any computers on. With the rack squirreled away, the living room was completely silent. I powered up my workstation, but it was too noisy compared to the silence. So I bought some new, more silent fans to swap out, and now I can hear my hard drive chatter, which I can’t say I’ve been able to hear in longer than I can remember. :)

I’m still getting settled in, but am mostly there. Well, all of the essentials are there. :) I’m still trying to nail down stuff like furniture layout, which blocks getting any frames hung. I set up my machines the last part of the week, and found that it looks like I’m pretty well off, but have two dead power supplies. The first casualty of the trip was my phone, which I dropped on the asphalt the night before I left. Needless to say I was pretty upset about that. I left both my two monitors and my two torchiere lamps in Atlanta. I ordered some new lcds once I got here, and I still haven’t found replacement lamps that I like. I’m half wishing I had brought them all with me… But there was no room in the trailer for either. If I gain much more stuff I’ll for sure not be able to fit in a 6′x12′ trailer next time, though I tell myself that I’ll never pull that size of a trailer across the US ever again. We’ll see if I keep the sentiment next time I move. There of course were some scratches on things, which I guess eventually I’ll get used to, though I don’t recall there being so much damage to stuff when I moved to Atlanta. Maybe it was due to less stuff, or the shorter trip, or just a poor memory. Also, the dvd player is having issues, too…

Cribbed from a movie, but none-the-less apropos.

Today marks a profound, though
bittersweet, milestone for all of us
as we bear witness
to both an end and a beginning.

And while we must continue on,
we must also be grateful
to have been blessed
with people
who have so ably guided us
to where we are today.

When there has been so much love
and happiness for someone
it is natural to be reluctant
to close such a wonderful chapter
in our lives.

For moving forward
is rarely accomplished without
considerable grief and sadness.

And while our sorrow
may be profound
the clouds will clear
and the sun will shine on us again.

And in that warm, bright light
we will find ourselves
facing a glorious future.

A future of exciting challenges
and infinite possibility
in which the horizon
will stretch out before us
rimmed in the heavenly glow
of the sunrise of our tomorrow.

Many things to remember while moving. Many things that have already been forgotten again. But this one for now: I ran across the programmable remote control I had in high school I used to control the in-classroom tvs and vcrs. Good times, good times…

Alas, with the final passing of my lucky bamboo, so too goes my residency in Georgia. I really need to get off my tookus and move to California…

I am convinced you cannot convince anyone of anything (not even this).

Yesterday on my drive to work, it looked like the bulk of the flood was gone, but it also looked like there was still a ton of water around. Ever since the water’s been restored in Douglas County, we’ve been under a boil advisory. I bet we continue to be under one for at least a few more days. The water’s probably ok to drink, but they’re probably playing it safe. I can’t wait for it do be drinkable so I can stop using very cold Britta water to brush my teeth, as well as doing some much needed laundry.

The road I take to work was closed yesterday and continues to be closed, even tonight, despite being free from water on the road. I haven’t heard the reason, but I bet Sweetwater Creek is still pretty high, and they might not have been able to inspect the bridges yet. I-20 was/is open, though, and I bet I was one of the first few to drive on it after it did open yesterday.

Other than a longer commute and the water (from the tap) stuff, I haven’t been terribly affected. But very close by there is complete devastation to peoples’ homes. I got lucky living on some high ground, but could have easily been a victim had I stumbled into a low-lying apartment complex.

It’s still very hard to believe that what seemed like a very unassuming several days of rain (of which there are many in Atlanta) would cause so much trouble. There was a 100-year flood in Canyon in the 70s, and until now I couldn’t imagine it. I can easily picture it now.

Seriously. A *ton of water. They sent us home early yesterday, which was good. I got some milk and DP on my way home. No water when I got home. :( Water this morning, though. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought Sweetwater Creek would have been flooded this much. Good and bad that I was unawares[sic] of the flooding, because I got to see it firsthand, and I also went back to take some pictures (pictures forthcoming). It’s perhaps the lull before the storm, because it’s supposed to rain some more, though not as bad. My apartment complex isn’t flooded at all, and surprisingly neither was the bridge across Sweetwater Creek State Park this afternoon. I basically don’t have any way to get to work that doesn’t involve driving around the world. :)

I totally forded something I shouldn’t have… but lived to tell about it. ;)

Rain, rain, go away. I totally forgot my wallet this morning (which makes it hard to buy things like gas, dp, and milk), had little water pressure this morning (but this time was able to take a shower — a few weeks ago I had zero water pressur), and didn’t know that there was a boil-water alert in effect until I got to work. :(

I did something dumb tonight. Never again will I roll my eyes when I see someone on the side of the road having run out of gas.

I’ve known for several++ days I needed gas. The fact that this tank took me 100 more miles than I normally go between fillings should have tipped me off. Or the fact that my car took several tries to turn over this morning, and then again when leaving work.

It was both a good and bad thing it died sitting at an intersection. At least there was a gas station at a corner. When the light turned green, and the yukon wouldn’t go, there was actually a tow truck right behind me. Then pretty soon a sheriff’s deputy showed up behind me and nudged me into the gas station. I could have done without his seeming tone of “you’re a frickin’ idiot, what have you been smoking/drinking tonight?”, but he did leave me to fill up in peace, having never gotten out of his car. I don’t know if that was a good thing or he was just being lazy, or what. I put 10 gallons in, so that if it wasn’t me just being out of gas, I wouldn’t have a full tank with nowhere to go. I turn it over and voila, it runs! I go down the road to the Quik Trip I intended to go to initially, filling up the rest of the tank. This time it’s 19.5 gallons. That makes a total of 29.5 gallons. The manual says the tank holds 30. I would have sworn it was 32, and anyway I thought there was a fudge factor.

My heart’s still racing a bit. But this illustrates my point of why I think I don’t pay nearly as much attention as I used to, because when things go bad, it’s often not nearly as difficult as you think to get out of a tough spot. Hopefully I can chalk it up to life experience, but I should know better and chalk it up to luck and someone looking out for me.

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Why do I always wake up tired, but go to bed not?

Then I visited this e-store, tried blue pilules and understood, why there are so many stories around it. I just recommend you to try. Fistful of dollars will bring you desire!

When watching a “Garnier Fructis” commerical, and they ask if you “want volume you can actually measure?”, does it disappoint you when they don’t explain exactly how to measure it? :)

I’ve been trying to figure out a tune since at least May 28, 2007. I managed to recognize it on the radio today and caught the name, Nimrod from Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar. There’s no telling when or where I played it, but obviously it got stuck up there somewhere. :)

Also last Sunday, I finally finished the last 6 episodes of the 8th season. I guess I don’t have much to comment about besides that it was decent. Nothing really mind-blowing. But apparently I consider worth nothing. :)

The weekend was quite nice. Unfortunately Saturday it decided to get hot again, after having several days of 70s and being quite pleasant. I rode Friday evening after some marathon meetings. Getting a work out was good. :)

On Saturday, I multitasked while getting a car wash, scarfing down lunch and hoping my antenna didn’t get torn off or bent. I headed downtown, ignoring the signs that said “avoid 75/85 downtown”. They weren’t lying, and I sat in traffic for a good 30 minutes. I left rather early, so I had time to waste. I did fill this time, though, with some traffic engineering. I made it to this theater (UA Tara), mid-afternoon. It was quite old, only had like 4 screens, and didn’t even have stadium seating, which quite surprised me. It looked like it had a bunch of indie films, and strangely the vast majority of folks watching were older (i.e. retired). Not quite the demographic I’m used to seeing at the theater.

First up was The Hurt Locker. I wasn’t too impressed (aka I didn’t really get it). I’m not really one for this particular genre of war movies.

I had a bit to kill until the next movie, so I ate at The Varsity Jr.. I can now say that I’ve eaten at The Varsity (even if it wasn’t the one on 75/85 :) ). It wasn’t too bad (though I wasn’t terribly hungry to begin with — given me eating only a few hours prior, and I’m not especially one for hot dogs).

Then at the same theater, it was on to Away We Go, with its stellar cast. It’s a Focus film, so you know it’s good. :) It was probably my favorite of the three.

The film let out a little after 9pm, leaving little time to find the next theater to see (500) Days of Summer. It was close by (10 minutes), but I’d never been there before. Along the way I re-found Taco C. I thought I blogged about it being in a shady part of town (but I couldn’t find a post in a cursory search). But, having lived here longer, it still is in a possibly shady part of town, but not in a necessarily unsafe part of town. I’ll probably have to frequent there more often when the urge hits me. I finally found the shopping center containing the theater, but had issues actually finding it. Asking someone for help, I managed to find it, get my tickets, and sit down just as it was starting. The house was packed, but I found a decent seat. Yay for things working out! I will probably leave my full review for another post, but I will say that while I immensely enjoyed the dialog/comedy, thought it was a really good movie, and think people should see it, I really didn’t like it. Like I said, the full review (including spoilers) will have to wait for another rant, er I mean post. :)

After driving back to to the suburbs, I had an Oreo blast from Sonic at midnight, to top off the night. Good times.

I just spent 3 hours looking for a video I knew existed. :(

Ug. Flight from atl to dfw good. Have to wait to fix flight door motor from dfw to ama. 30 min late. Got to ama; no luggage :( no refund of my $15, but luggage couriered to canyon at their expense :)

1030a flight from ama to iah on tues cancelled. Weather fail at iah. No text, no call, no nothin’. They automatically rebooked on 430p; good. 2h wait in line to find out what I already knew, not so good. 430p ontime until it wasn’t, at about 345p. Delayed til 530p. Which means ill prolly miss my connection. :( They nicely rebook on 1p flight, which seemed to want to leave at 435p. But then plane requires 10m of maintenance. :( 45m later, we finally start boarding. During this time the 430p flight arrives at ama. Since our jet was empty and still needing maint, they pulled it away from the jet bridge, so we board on the tarmac. Fun. Both the 1p and 430p leave around 530p, which still makes me think I’m gonna miss my connection. Sleep most of the way and get to iah at 7p. 30m to catch connection. Sprint catty-corner thru term b to catch ghetto bus to term a. Make it to conn w/ 10m to spare. Flight to cll uneventful. At cll, no cars to rent and no luggage. Luckily while waiting on ride luggage arrives on next flight.

Not much more luck on the flight from College Station back to ATL. Make it to Houston fine, after waiting a bit on tsa to open shop and babysit us through the process. Get on plane and start taxiing to take off on-time (supposed to leave at 447p). Something like 45 minutes go by, still on tarmac. Eventually they say that there’s a ground lock in Atlanta, more info in 20 min. Eventually they say that they’ll take us back to the gate. Once at the gate, I scarf down Popeye’s because I have no idea when my next meal will be. I also stock up on bottled water, just in case. I think it was like twice that they said “we’ll have more info in one hour”. Lots of reading and lots of people watching. Eventually they set the departure time of like 1020p. We get in at like 2am. Yet again I’m like 6 hours later than I was supposed to be. At least this time I didn’t have to pay for checking my bag, and they didn’t manage to lose the bag, either.

I totally watched all of “Chess in Concert” on pbs the night it originally aired on June 17. To this day I still don’t really understand why. I did somewhat enjoy it, though… Also just caught “Old Crow Medicine Show” on Austin City Limits, which was also very high quality. :)

Flipping through the channels and stopping to watch Chelsea Lately, plus reading “3 way handshake episode 15” in my rss feeds, makes me think that a “3 way handshake” has to be a euphemism for something… :)

It’s sad that some benevolent benefactor doesn’t swoop in and save journalism. I wonder if it would even make it easier/better for the journalists, if they don’t have to be concerned with their parent company’s advertising interests. It sort of begs the question about how the major wire services make money and how few people are required to write about one story such that it is sufficiently covered. I wonder how long $1b would last if you took a bunch of journalists and paid them and put their stuff on the web for free…

Hmm, well that was a lackluster post, wasn’t it?

vigesimal: base-20 numeral system

This one actually came up at work (around the microkitchen if you believe it).

somnambulant: walking or having the habit of walking while asleep

“You’re doing it wrong.”

I don’t know why, but I’ve got a serious case of the Mondays. I woke up super tired, probably because I don’t think I slept very well. I seem to recall half waking up a couple of times, which would probably account for it. I didn’t go to bed particularly late last night, but then again I don’t recall exactly when I went to bed.

I spent most of the weekend fighting with trying to parse METAR data. It’s amazing how difficult it is to parse correctly and thoroughly, worse that the couple of python implementations left me a bit wanting, and quite sad that the best implementation I’ve seen is written in javascript.

In other news, what movies have I seen of late? I’ve seen “Singing in the Rain”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”, and “Adventureland”, all of which were quite good. I also saw “Wall-E” and “Jumper”, both of which I found lacking. I’ve got “Ben Hur” on Netflix right now, and I really need to sit down and watch it… I’m probably missing others, as I just remember that I didn’t ever post about “Adventureland”, which I happened to see in the theater some time ago.

Maybe I take myself too seriously?

This has to be the first time in my life where I wanted to see some advertising staring me in the face but didn’t. I have been watching more late night tv of late. A few nights ago, Stewart had some dude on. The dude sounded smart and was schlepping a book. I go to comedy central’s website to find said book. Unfortunately no love for a “hey you! find this book on amazon!” button. I had to like watch the video for 2 seconds and type the title into papa goog to find it. What a waste of my time. :) But more importantly a possible revenue sharing opportunity lost for ye olde comedy central (even though amazon is shying away from their affiliate program nowadays). Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Oh for the love, what ever happened to:

• late night tv where guests stayed the whole time
• news that covered more than one story per day
• sitcoms with undercurrents of political/societal commentary (can anyone name one that’s not Stewart or Colbert?)

For all you philosophizers out there. Describe truth in the context of history in 30 words or less. How much of what we think is true, really isn’t? Discuss.

Reiter notes that each of the possible causes of the “rapid recrudescence” of mosquito-borne diseases—including population growth, “irrigation and other agricultural activities, ecologic change, movement of people, urbanization, deterioration of public health services, resistance to insecticides and anti-malarial drugs, deterioration of vector control operations, and disruptions from war, civil strife, and natural disasters.”

Hmm, I should have picked a shorter sentence…

“The paucity of information” in the IPCC reports “was hardly surprising: not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject!”

We protest, but are rarely quoted, and if so, usually as a codicil to the scary stuff.

I meant to note this shortly after it happened, but I kept forgetting. Like maybe a month and a half to two months ago, I swear I had Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” in my head for five days straight.

Probably most of you didn’t know that I was out in California, but alas I’m back. Good to sleep in my own bed and drive my own car. The two weeks were stressful, due to projects at work, so it is really good to be back, though the stress won’t likely go away any time soon. The weather there was nice, but a little chilly at times. And I’ll complain that the water pressure in the corp apartments was quite lacking. I didn’t eat at as many cafe’s as I should have, but then again, I’ve eaten at most of them before. All in all a good trip, especially since I did a better job of networking this time, introducing myself to people I’ve only see on video conference or in email.

I have jury duty starting Monday, so that will be interesting. Here’s hoping I don’t oversleep. :)

I cannot tell people how to cut my hair to save my life. They get close/decent, but rarely do they do a really great cut. I swear the hair on the top of my head is like twice as long as it should be. It makes me want to fly home just so I can get a decent haircut. Or maybe it’s my hair changing, and it has to be cut differently than before. Man, I was super spoiled by my original barber, who cut my hair for 15 years…

Man, it’s been a long day. Had to get up at 5am to do work stuff. It’s a little after 4pm now. I still haven’t taken a shower yet today and lunch consisted of some dry Cheerios at just before 4. Probably a few more hours to go yet…

The weather finally warmed up this weekend, enough for me to go riding. Since I sort of poorly planned my Saturday, I only had time for a very short ride, I think about 20 minutes, before I needed to be back and get ready for a wedding I was going to. So, the first ride of the year’s a short one, but given how long it’s been, probably not the worst of ideas. I convinced myself to go out again today, which resulted in a 6 mile ride. Lunch on both days was pretty late, so by the time I was getting out, it was starting to cool off pretty well.

I hereby declare, that Georgia is no longer a Southern state, due to its citizens not knowing that there’s a dance to go along with the song, and thus of course the steps to said dance, effective this day, Saturday, February 7, 2009.

It only took nine months (and me calling them to again ask nicely for my money), but paypal finally refunded me the full amount they owed me. Woohoo!

My late lunch left me wanting a late dinner. Why didn’t anyone warn me that most of the eateries would be closed? Shoney’s and Waffle House were open, but none of the fast food joints. :(

I won’t offer up a resolution this New Year’s Eve, as I think they are dumb, ’cause it’s just bad form to make a promise you know you won’t keep. Instead I offer a theme. Ever since Chicago, I’ve thought a lot about whether or not I’m happy about the choices I’ve made thus far as a grown-up. I’m blindingly single, don’t have any world changing accomplishment to speak of, and am probably past my prime. My hair’s thinning, my teeth are getting sensitive, and my body aches a little more than it used to. And two out of the previous three things are directly due to choices I made. I could be using Rogaine to stem the tide of hair loss, and if I was more active, I probably wouldn’t sit still as much, so when I did, I wouldn’t be as stiff.

I distinctly remember reading the book that Greg mentioned, “How to get a date worth keeping, Be dating in six months or your money back”, and thinking to myself how I was utterly unwilling to do the really quite reasonable things the book told you to do. I forget now, but my takeaway from it was basically, meet women, lots and lots of women. That it’s an odds game, and the more you meet, the more likely you’ll become to roll that 0.000000X% chance per person up into a whole person.

Sitting in the Amarillo and DFW airports for Christmas, I was not only being conscious of the beautiful women around me, but also of the men they’re with. What would it take to become par with the sort of men those women are with? As Max would attest, it’s been a long road in changing my appearance. I’m sure he’d mention the hat and the glasses and the t-shirts and the shorts. I rarely wear my hat, the glasses are different, I normally wear jeans nowadays, but I still wear lots of t-shirts. And those things are not earth shattering in and of themselves by any means. I’ve watched “What Not to Wear” a little more than I should and have seen people transform their emotional well being along with their wardrobe, if only for a little while. And seeing all too many beautiful women with their husbands (you should search Youtube for awesome first dances at wedding receptions), I can’t help but wonder if I am honestly at a point where I’d be willing to transform myself into something the women that I want, want. And whether or not I could be genuinely and sufficiently comfortable with and sell whatever form that change might take, and whether they’d be receptive to something that doesn’t come by me naturally.

And so all of these things, and even some others, lead me to my point and theme, which is unscrupulously taken from Gandhi. The quote was on the tip of my mind, but I was unable to actually remember it and the internets doth provide:

We must become the change we want to see in the world.

But in my case, it is not the change I desire to see in the world, rather the change I desire to see in myself. I’m not sure how a selection from this quote speaks more to me, but somehow “becoming the change I want to see” seems more poignant than just “change” or “do”. Somehow it evokes to me a sense of empowerment. Somehow something more than just concentration on a of series of obstacles to overcome. But in the same way we do not look at our feet to walk, rather we afix our eyes on our goal, our destination, and the rest comes naturally.

So that is my theme: “become the change you wish to see”. Change not for its own sake, but for a purpose. Though no thing worth doing is ever easy, my sincere hope is that change comes easily when you genuinely desire it. Change that comes as reflexively as breathing or catching a ball. Not fleeting change you believe in, hope for, or desire, but rather change we know we must achieve if we are to achieve anything else.

Must have the ability, the means, and the desire to see the world.
Must be up for eating some really good food.
Must have a sincere desire to better appreciate the significance of a different people, country, and culture.
Preferably female and single (and easy on the eyes).
Must be willing to do the tourist thing and have a desire to do as the townies do (when in Rome…).
I will indulge cultural things (like opera and theater), if you’ll indulge my photography habit.
Ideally an early riser, as I’m not the best at rising early (though I do think I have awesome jet lag avoidance skills).

For some time now I’ve had this travel itch. Going on the cruise was enlightening. Did you know you don’t just have to go to the Caribbean or Alaska on a cruise? They go to Hawaii, to Europe, around Europe, probably around to Asia, through the Panama Canal, and plumb around the world.

Specifically, I’ve wanted to do some touring of Europe. I’ve got a few contacts in Europe now, and honestly I’d think I could either crash on their couch or at least get the dl on where to stay and what to do. The Spain – On The Road Again series hasn’t done much to curb my cravings, nor did watching Walking the Bible. And now with Chad moving to France, and Rob soon to leave Japan, my mind continues to wonder to places other than here.

But, this becomes logistically difficult. Between what I’m sure would be my parents’ concerns of traveling alone, and much more the lack of desire to see the world alone (I have these visions of going and then proceeding to sleep the entire time), I am stuck.

And even if you could find someone who could get off work and then pay $$$, it’s not the simplest thing to find someone who is willing to just go and do. I realize now that whomever you’re traveling with needs to be of a like mind. Daylight can be awastin’, and if you’re not on the same page, then poor planning (or a lack of adventure) can eat several hours of possible sightseeing.

I have the ability, the desire, and the means right now, and I know that the older I get the harder it’ll be, and that if I don’t go, that I’ll regret it.

I just want to go on the record on a couple of things. I’ve been meaning to mention these for a while, but I kept forgetting.

1) Global warming. I call bs on this one. I’m in the camp that the temperature is more dependent on the solar cycle than minor fluctuations we impose. I predict that it will get way colder over the next 5 years, and that the debate will not have moved one iota, as the environmentalists will continue to tow their line and will not be swayed, no matter how far the temperature average drops. It’s sad we can’t have a civil discourse about this.
2) Ethanol. Ethanol is dumb and just poor policy. No real alternative energy source should cause food prices to rise. Nor should it have to be super subsidized (unfortunately it will have be subsidized some, but the true alternative most likely will be the first one that’s lucrative).
3) Alternative energy. I say this isn’t the panacea that many people tote it to be. Aside from the obvious lack of base load, the lack of correlation between source locations and population centers, and the inability for any commercial entity thus far to have been able to sufficiently monetize it, I don’t think we should pour lots of money into it, as it’s honestly just not a good, cheap, long term solution.

Who was the idiot who booked my flight at 610a? Oh, wait, that’d be me…

I made some notes when I booked these tickets around October 27/28:

monday, checked yahoo, aa: 483 atl to ama, thurs thru mon
tuesday, checked yahoo, aa: 425 atl to ama, thurs thru mon
booked ticket tuesday night, yahoo, aa: 390 atl to ama, thurs thru mon

Honestly, what sense does that make? The only thing I can figure is that demand rises around the 30 day mark, because everyone thinks there’s a cutoff and that the prices will precipitously increase. So everyone books 30 days out, increasing demand and thus price, and then it drops off. At least for once my cheap side actually paid off, as normally it doesn’t.

I can’t seem to shake this feeling that I’ve forgotten something. I don’t even have an inkling for what it might be. :(

In other news, I’ve had that stupid catchy iPhone song in my head (The Submarines’ song “You, Me, & the Bourgeoisie”).

Hmm, it’s sort of sad it’s been almost a month since I’ve written last. I’ll be heading to Canyon on Thursday morning, flying back sometime Monday (I forget when exactly). Then on Thursday, I’m heading out to Chicago to see Chad for the “weekend”. I’ll be there until Sunday.

I’ve also been thinking about going on Choir Tour, which would be a pretty cheap, week’s worth of vacation…

I had this Neil Diamond song in my head for a couple of days. Twas the oddest thing.

I’ve been watching some C-SPAN of late, catching PM’s questions, Alan Greenspan’s testimony, the testimony of the credit rating agencies, etc. It’s funny how these hearings seem really pointless, not unlike many regular meetings. All too often it’s people talking, and not a lot of getting things done. Also, it seemed like in the more high profile ones, that Congressmen were all too often trying to push an agenda, seeming to me like they weren’t really wanting to hear whatever those testifying had to say. Perhaps they’ve become cynical that those testifying have their own agenda, so they will ask directing questions, and not really let people speak? It’s a sad state of affairs. Some of the lesser committees seem like they are more interested in getting to the truth. But I have to wonder how quickly even the staunchest idealist would soon be pulled down into the dregs of everyday congressional life; if every day brings you closer to just becoming a cog in the government wheel and further away from your ability to inject change and remember what it was looking from the outside in.

If anyone reading this ever writes a sitcom, write a plot around this:

Twice in the past 6 months, there has been a car directly outside my apartment that spontaneously started honking its horn. Not in the expected and obnoxious car alarm way, but in a constant, monotonic, piercing way. I never knew a horn could sustain like this for so long. I really wonder how much it drains the battery. The first time was quite late at night, making it all the more dreadful when you’re trying to go to sleep (or wake up to it), but this time, it’s in the early evening, so not quite as bad. Either way entirely annoying, and after listening to it for any period of time, I think it quite difficult for anyone to not want to pummel whomever’s car it is.

As I was channel surfing tonight, I came across the Prime Minster’s questions on CSPAN. When asked about the financial crisis, he (the PM) gave the most measured commentary, of which I had not heard elsewhere, also of which I would not imagine you would hear any pundit say in the US:

I was talking about irresponsibility in the financial markets. Now everyone agrees about irresponsibility in the financial markets, but let me say, because I think it should be clear to the people of this country, that the dividing line here is not between business and being anti-business, or between market and being anti-market. The dividing line that we have is between rewarding hard work, effort and responsibility—rewarding enterprise—and rewarding excessive risk-taking or irresponsible risk-taking. [Interruption.] The all-party consensus seems to have dissipated a little.

I personally think that the whole country will agree that that is the right thing. Let us reward work, let us reward effort, let us reward enterprise, let us reward responsible risk-taking; but let us deal with the problem—and sort it out once and for all—of excessive and irresponsible risk-taking.¹

In addition the right and honorable Mr. David Cameron said this:

…we are trying to save the banking system not as an end in itself, but to save the wider economy…²

Hear, hear!

Home again. It’s been since April, I think, that I’ve been home. I made it out for the family reunion in DFW, which I think was the last time I saw everyone. I’m flying out in the morning and will be in Canyon through the weekend, flying back Monday evening. I’ll probably have to work at least a day while I’m there, but shouldn’t be too bad, and I know my parents won’t mind too much.

I rode 15.25 miles yesterday, and it almost killed me. Well, really only mile 8. I woke up feeling pretty good, so since I hadn’t ridden in quite a while, I felt like going out. And, to my undoing, I thought I’d stretch my normal ride from 8 miles to 15. Not the best decision in hindsight. In mile 8 I was just dieing so I stopped and proceeded to puke up all of the undigested Dr Pepper I’d had that morning. I do not recall the last time I puked. It must be like college or maybe even high school. A long time. Anyway, after I cooled off for some number of minutes, I got back on and rode home. Interestingly enough the rest of the ride, while I took extremely slow, was pretty uneventful. When I made it home, I really wasn’t nearly as tired as I could have been given the circumstances. I felt it the rest of the day, though. My sternum still feels a little sore, and since the ride was twice as long (over an hour), my butt and arms weren’t feeling so hot. But, I did it, and it didn’t kill me, so that’s not nothing.

For a good part of Monday, sitting for any length of time would induce a feeling of still being on the boat and rocking. I’d say for at least half of the day it was like that, and even still today I’m feeling it some.

I want pop-up video for news and speeches so badly…

Did I forget to mention that I’ll be going on an Alaskan Cruise? Oops. :) Anyway, I’m back.

The past three or so weeks have really flown by. I’m not even really sure why. I guess lots to do at work makes the days go quickly, and long days lead to short evenings.

One week down in Mountain View, and one week to go (unless I extend my stay an extra few days). I didn’t do anything this weekend, just lounged around, keeping tabs on the storms and trying some to catch up on the politics.

I did manage to see several flicks this weekend that I’ve never seen before. I’ve had African Queen on my to-see list for quite some time, and finally saw it on AMC. It was a surprise to me that it was in color, but overall it was good; the quality you’d expect from Bogey and Hepburn. Just before I left I watched Transformers, which was really good. I never was particularly interested in watching it, but I think Drew’s comment on Facebook made me revisit it. My next to last batch of Netflix included 21, which was really good, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, which was also good, and the first disc from Carrier, which is pretty interesting. I currently have out Semi Pro, which wasn’t as funny as I would have liked, but still enjoyable, Fool’s Gold, which was passable, and A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, which was ok, and semi-educational. Tonight I also saw for the first time Dirty Harry, which is a classic I’ll likely have to watch again, and this afternoon I saw License to Wed, which was better than I was expecting. I guess having John Krasinski (and some very large majority of the cast of The Office) really did it for me. Had they all had not been in it, I dunno how I would have felt.

I finally managed to do some laundry tonight, which is good, because I would have been out of clothes after today. :) I also managed to trim my nails, which I tend to put off all too much. Much like the haircut I am really in need of (even though it’s only been like a month and a half since I got one at Sallie’s wedding). I had to spend several days in a hotel before the corp apartment was available, so that was a little different that usual, and as always it’s nice to get into the apartment, where it’s a little more like home (even equipped with an empty refrigerator :) ). It’s been good to see the people here face to face, but I am half already looking forward to getting back to Atlanta and even more ready to take some time off. The time off kind of sucks, though, because it’s hard enough to keep up with work in real time, let alone keeping up with everything that’s going on after being out of the loop for 5 business days (and even more calendar days).

I guess that counts as a real update, but basically things are chugging along and the days are passing at an unbelievable (and I do mean unbelievable) clip.

As the major news media is want to do, they have been constantly repeating themselves. They really should have a channel that’s just a loop of a 5 minute segment that changes only every 30 minutes (I think Headline News does this somewhat, but it’s more for airports and the like, where people aren’t watching it for extended periods). That way everyone who’s just tuning in would likely get an update and people aren’t under any uncertain expectation that what they are doing is breaking “news” and not just repeating themselves with slight variations. “Well the eye has moved about 1584 feet since we last updated you” isn’t really much of an update (as I can just do the math thank you very much). “The estimate is still that there are about 10k people left in New Orleans.”

As I happened to watch Fox News after watching a bunch of Discovery about squids, I happened upon 2 bits of new and actual information, relating to levies and to the evacuation. I only caught a bit about the first, but it was in relation to something about the design of the levies changing. Actually, I don’t know what they changed or how it is better, but I’d personally like to hear more. Also, another reporter said something about Amtrak trains and barcoded bracelets being used in the evacuations. News to me. So, instead of just repeating the same of when it’s supposed to hit landfall, that everyone’s evacuated, that the French Quarter is vacant, that everyone’s playing nice, etc, it might be nice to step away from the fact it’s basically in the same place it was 5 minutes ago and delve into some of the more technical things. What has the Army Corps done over the past 3 years to improve things? What legislation was passed (or not) to help with the storm? What were the evacuation plans? Why has it gone so much better? How are these barcodes being used? Where are the people going? What do the FEMA towns look like 3 years later? Why are they still around? Does boarding up your house really help? What are the major preparations people have to make? What sorts of things do people have to clean up and fix after the storm? Do most people have insurance that covers these incidents?

Why haven’t we heard about how much better it’s being handled with regard to the Bush administration. They’ve been saying over and over how much better everyone’s prepared, but I hear this deafening silence of any attribution of the preparation to Bush. Maybe I’ve just missed it, but it seems to me that at this stage of the game that he was solely responsible for Katrina, but now no one seems to give him any credit for the success up until this point.

I am. I made it back in one piece. While I was sweating a good deal of the way from College Station to DFW, I eventually cooled off. Though when I got there I thought it a good idea to walk from the end of B to midway through C terminal. Yay for exercise but down with sweat! I really enjoyed having a weekend off, even if it was all too short. I got to see a bunch of people, but didn’t feel like I got to really talk with very many of them. I think my portion of the reception went well, even if I was a bit rusty. Luckily we didn’t have to move the sound system in the Great Hall in the Family Life Center. For my own future reference, I got a haircut on Friday. It wasn’t as short as I would have liked, but on short notice, and short on time, it worked.

At the risk of sounding cliché, I really enjoyed seeing everyone. Even if I only saw you in passing it really was nice to see the faces and hug the friends I love.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been posting at least daily for some time in the photoblog, so you should definitely keep an eye on it as it should keep updating for quite some time.

It’s been a bad hardware weekend for me. The filer was giving me fits, so I finally looked for any possible hardware problems. Checking smart, a brand new drive gives “HARDWARE IMPENDING FAILURE GENERAL HARD DRIVE FAILURE [asc=5d, ascq=10]“. Doing a quick search reveals that I myself have had this error before… zfs was happy with the drive, but now is showing errors at the file system level. Even after I removed it, I was having issues, so I ran memtest on it. Good thing it has ecc memory in it, because it’s also showing single bit memory errors. And, to top it off, I’ve had 2 out of my 4 new dimms go bad in my new computer build. It’ll be fun rma’ing them, because it was a dimm in each of the kits I bought, so if I were to rma them simultaneously the new computer wouldn’t be able to boot. In other news I finally put a second coat of stain onto my coffee table this afternoon. A quick search reveals it’s only taken me a year and a half to get it into a usable state (so much for being a person who doesn’t have home projects last years). So, to recap my recent spending spree, I have a new computer, new hard drives, and just since last Thursday a new tv. A frickin’ huge, ginormous tv. Everyone will have to come over to see it and all its 1080p glory. ;) It was definitely nice to have a three day weekend, even if it only really felt like two somehow. I finished the first season of Weeds, which did get better towards the end for me. I think I’m still uneasy about rooting for the good guy who is bad, though — which makes me wonder if Sopranos was the same if I’d enjoy it. I’m also looking forward to flying back to CS and getting to see people. With all of the stuff I’ve bought of late, I’m wary of another big purchase in the form of the L glass. Someone please prod me in the direction that this is a good long term investment. :)

So I watched the first half of season one of Weeds over the past day or two. I must say I’m pretty disappointed. I just don’t really “get” the show. I think it’s because I don’t identify with Nancy. I think I love more than my fair share of deeply flawed characters (West Wing and Sports Night to mention two shows chocked full of them). But this one’s too far off the deep end for me. She lost her husband, but we seen no real emoted grief from her. I almost think she didn’t really love him nor misses him that much. Maybe you could argue that her life is so upside down at the moment that she doesn’t have time. But shouldn’t that exacerbate and expose those things she’s not dealing with? She constantly bemoans her life and how it’s so messed up, yet she does nothing to change it. Her friends are really bad ones. We haven’t seen or heard anything of her own family. I don’t understand why she thinks she has to continue down this path. She never even questions seriously what she’s doing. Why doesn’t she just get a real job? We don’t even get any rationalization why she continues to sell. Does she not have any marketable skills? Most of the other deeply flawed characters I’ve enjoyed over the years are flawed due to their undying dedication, altruism, and unwavering commitment that the job or change they are trying to achieve is for the greater good. What is she trying to do? Keep her head above water? Does she even like the town she’s in? She can’t do her own laundry? I mean it’s not like she’s the only person with problems in their life. That is life. Deal with it, but not by selling drugs, absolutely ignoring what you should be doing, and passing off morals as “not selling to kids”.

OMFG. So when I went to BoA to ask them to get my money back from Paypal, I thought I actually would. I know how good credit card companies are at fraud. They sent me the affidavit, which I dutifully signed and sent back. A week or two later they reverse the check and I get all of the money back into my bank account. Great! But then I look at my Paypal balance. $-489. WTF? So they totally charged me for the money the bank got. What kind of system is that? I’ve done all that work (well make BoA do all that work) for naught. I call up Paypal who are again stonewalling me. “Yes we’re sorry this is unfortunate. Yes it is the expected behavior to deduct this from your account. Yes our fraud department is doing all they can to get your money back. No we don’t know when you’ll get your money back. Yes, you better hope this doesn’t go into debt collection.” So then I’m like, well, I don’t want a negative balance because I want a working Paypal account (which at this point is debatable). So I’m like, well I want it now, I’ll pay with credit. They have my credit card number on file, so I quickly click through the process. Immediately after I hit the “yes really deduct this from my credit card” button I read the fine print that read something like “this will show up as a cash advance and your credit card company may charge you as such”. Again with the wtf? At this point I’m past the point of no return, so I quickly load up my online banking to see if the charge is pending. It is, but I don’t see any extra fees. Maybe I dodged a bullet. Nope, looking at my current outstanding charges, there’s an extra $15 charge there for “CASH EQUIVALENT TRANSA[CTION]“. Oh for the love. I’m out closer to $505 due to my double stupidity. :(

I finally tonight bought a new computer. I’ve been putting it off for like over 6 months. The price has logically dropped in that timeframe, and only time will tell if the savings were worth the not-enough-ram-for-everthing-I’d-like-to-keep-open-all-the-time and only using one of my 2 really old 19″ crts…

Informal poll: Who thinks I should buy L glass to replace my broken kit lens (specifically the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM)? I’m really starting to jones for it. And if all of my major purchases in the past month weren’t enough, the jonesing for a very large tv is rearing its ugly head again.

During some late night flight back from somewhere to Atlanta, I watched “How I Met Your Mother” on the plane. I must have caught a couple of episodes on a couple of flights. Anyway, it struck me as a decent show, so I finally started watching it. I got through the first season (yesterday?) and through most of the second today. I’m sort of stuck on an episode at the moment (18 to be exact). Which is bad because I was starting to think I might have been able to finish it today (the second season). But it’s getting late, so really I should go to bed. Anyway I’ve like it pretty well and will catch up to current filming (they finished season three). The first season was really good, but about a third of the way through the second season, a lot of the tension was resolved and it seemed to move to more episodic stories. Before there were some longer arcs and long unresolved issues, which I really liked. And of course you can drag those out for too long *cough*lost*cough*. So I understand the need to move on from those story devices, but having episode after episode of everybody getting along and nothing terrible really happening can get a little boring and mundane pretty quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I still like it and plan on finishing it. But it seems like something changed from the first season. Maybe it was that I finally felt like I understood the characters, so little is surprising now about how they act and react and what I expect. I guess I should try and check out the commentaries and see if they’re interesting…

So besides sweltering in my own apartment due to an air conditioner that I think is working much less optimally than it should, for dinner tonight, I decided that since I didn’t really want fast food, that I would just eat some cereal. Having just returned from two weeks traveling, I of course didn’t have any milk to speak of (well you might assume that I still had rotting milk in the fridge, and you might be correct, but I did have the foresight to throw the milk out before I left). Standing in line to check out with my one item of half a gallon of vitamin d, whole milk, the lady behind me asks me, “how much is the milk?”. Which is a perfectly valid question. You know like, maybe it was on sale, or maybe she’s wondering if the price of milk has gone up with all the transportation price hikes due to gas prices. I had no idea how much the milk was. I felt really bad for not knowing. There was this episode of West Wing, where the press secretary was making a point about how the other side was out of touch because they didn’t even know the price of milk, only to realize that they themselves didn’t know the price of a gallon of milk. The price couldn’t have made a bit of difference to me. I only care in so much that it would have been cheaper than buying a combo meal at <insert your favorite fast food place here>.

Sort of like the price of gas. I have to pay it, and there’s no real way for me to game the system to get cheaper gas, so I just buy it. I buy it at the place where I know it’s usually the cheapest (Kroger). But I did a few days ago look at my gas spending, and while I thought that it was a bit low, it looked like I’m spending $100 a month on it (over the last 6 months). Which seems odd because when I figured it before it was like $125, but that have been over a longer period when I had some additional commuting. Now I don’t have that, but it still doesn’t seem like that would account for the doubling of the price of gas and my cost per month dropping. If it is true, then it’s really a good sign that I don’t really need a new car for the gas. So, if that number is correct, and if the new car doubled the in-town mpg (which would be asking a lot I’m guessing), then the car payment would have to be like $50. Which I don’t think I’d want any car that came with a $50 monthly payment. :)

Classic. Definitely a new fave to add to the collection. Sort of reminds me of Chad’s story about “mathsturbatory”, though I only recall the word and not the story. :)

I did buy drives at Frys (3 1TB drives), so I’m looking forward to taking them on the plane and getting them into service in the array. I also called BoA this week and they were super helpful with the whole fraud thing. They should be sending me an affidavit and hopefully after some not short length of time, I’ll get the $$ back.

~One more day left in Cali (um, did I mention I’ve been in California for almost 2 weeks now?) and I’m looking forward to being back, though from what I hear it’s pretty warm there. :)

Don’t you hate writing something you know you’re going to regret later, writing it anyway, and then regretting it later? I sure do.

Times like these should remind me that the grass really isn’t greener over there in talk-more land, and I should just keep to what I know best, being quiet. :)

I am super not happy. Over a month ago, I bought some hard drives on eBay with buy it now. I never saw the drives, and I’m wondering if I’ll ever see the rest of my money. I got back $200 from PayPal with their modest buyer protection, but after calling their customer service (who was a nice English-as-a-first-language lady who answered my questions as best she could) I have little faith that my $450 will ever be recovered by them. I paid straight through my bank account, so there isn’t any protection via my credit card company, but I might call BoA anyway and see if they can do anything for me. It’s been a while now, and I’m sure the longer I wait the harder it will be to recover the funds. :( I guess I’ll be sticking to the retail versions of things for a while, while I lick my wounds from a hard learned (and costly) lesson in seller feedback percentages and ways to protect myself better against possible fraud.

So there was some song in my head this morning that I was like “I should post that before I forget”. And then I forgot, and I couldn’t get random Coldplay and Third Day’s “I’ve Always Loved You” out of my head long enough for the other to come back.

I was totally a slacker today and played volleyball on campus for 30 or 45 minutes with some peeps from my team. Good times.

Things I forgot on Monday:

I forgot a Dr Pepper in the friend’s car I rode in to the airport. I hate to leave trash in someone else’s car.
I forgot my WSJ paper in the back of the seat in front of me on the plane. Again with the leaving trash for someone to pick up after me.
I forgot to bring a jacket to cool Mountain View. I realized I had done this about the time I was scheduled to be picked up and taken to the airport. I though I could have made it back home again to grab one, but I was already cutting it close and didn’t want to miss getting my checked luggage checked.

Nothing Earth shattering, but definitely a thorn in my brain.

More than once this weekend, I thought, I need to sit down and blog about X before I forget. And yet this is still not a real post. Had a good weekend, but still recovering. Odd how I get up way earlier on vacation than for work. Makes for a sleepy Thomas and taking an extra day off makes for a good amount of work to catch up on. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be a little more up for a more substantive post.

Why is it impossible for me to go to bed before 2am?

When will I learn that flights get more expensive the longer you wait…

Why was I dreaming about a hedgehog? 6am and I’m soon catching a flight home for the weekend for Miyah’s baptism. American called me at like 10 to 4 due to my old flight being delayed. Only marginally coherent, they offered an earlier (and delayed as well) flight leaving around the same time, so I took it. Anyway, back Monday night. Got to shower and pack.

I finally got ipv6 working at home (and firewalled off even). It’s taken several tries and several months to finally (magically) start working. Projects for today include riding, laundry, and finally finishing my stupid coffee table.

I finally finished watching Jag all the way through. 10 seasons. That’s 6.62 days worth of TV altogether. Season 10 was a little tedious to get through…

Over the weekend I tried to procure a Cobalt Qube2 and a new lens on eBay. I think I enjoy bidding other people up more than actually buying stuff. :)

I’ve finally gotten around to posting more England pics in the photoblog than just Sallie (as you might have noticed with Liz yesterday). I still had some shots from Christmas left over, so for a while, it’s a Christmas photo first, then several hours later an England shot. Then, after I’m out of Christmas pictures, it’s 2-a-day Englands.

So this is my first post (likely the first of many) about the release of my port of TheLucid Typo theme to Wordpress. Please note that this is the what I recall being the original release of TheLucid theme from the SonicIQ guys, and not their 1.1 release of the theme. There were a couple of comments in my original post requesting it. I have no excuses for not posting this sooner, and I really, really, really, really feel badly that it’s taken me this long to get around to it. Half of me was hoping to update it to the newer upstream version, but that never happened. And I was hoping to maybe add gravatar support, and that never happened. And I couldn’t really remember exactly what you’d need to get it installed, and so weeks and months went by. :(

Anyway, so I think all that you need to do is untar lucid into your themes directory, untar my patched version of addicted to live search into your plugins directory, for non-2.5 WP installs, install the Gravatar plugin, and then enable them all. In addition, (as was pointed out in the comments) you’ll have to edit “javascript/lucid.js” to point it to the right location. I’ve tried to add some versioning into the names, as inevitably there will be bugs that need to be addressed. And, as a disclaimer, this is only for Wordpress 2.2, so I make no guarantees about it working with later WordPress versions (or even working at all :) ).

Please let me know if you guys have any issues with it.

Update: I edited this post some, updating the link to the current version, mentioning the Gravatar plugin, and that you’ll have to edit lucid.js to get search to work properly for you.

I bought plane tickets this morning to fly home for Miyah’s baptism the weekend of May 3. They were a little more expensive than a few days ago (~$50), but I chalked it up to passing the month ahead of time threshold. I also didn’t see my preferred flight time, that leaves AMA around 7p and gets into ATL around 12:30a. I look again tonight. The fair dropped back down $50 and the better flight time is there. I swear that that later flight wasn’t available when I looked earlier. So, now if I wanted to change to the later flight, it’ll cost me an additional $60 (since the drop of $50 actually will be put towards my original $100 cost to change). So, I’m out $100 ($60 change fee plus the $50 drop in price difference) to get on the flight I could now purchase for less than I paid this morning. Total racket. :/

is f’ing awesome!

So I’ve finally gone through my pictures from England, well a first pass at least. I figure I have about 135 (out of 632) that are worth anything. But, during all this, I realized that I’m missing a bunch of pictures that I took while in Coventry. And I can’t figure out what happened to them; all of my pictures from the middle of the day while in the Cathedral and for a little bit afterwards seem to just be gone. :(

So me shooting completely in raw while in England has really cramped my style, even a little more than usual. Sure I still really haven’t gone through my pictures from Christmas, but at least they’re all in jpg. Now, my whole workflow is broken and I can’t even open them in the program I usually use. The past several days have been fighting with software and operating systems to get to a point where I can even start to look at my pictures properly. :( I’m still not even close…

I can’t fit my tripod in my luggage. :(

(I bought new jeans.)

No, I will not model them for you.

I should be packing or something…

This looks like an exceptionally bad list of things to explicitly set out to accomplish, even if my ultimate boss was on the list of contributors:

* Make solar energy affordable
* Provide energy from fusion
* Develop carbon sequestration methods
* Manage the nitrogen cycle
* Provide access to clean water
* Restore and improve urban infrastructure
* Advance health informatics
* Engineer better medicines
* Reverse-engineer the brain
* Prevent nuclear terror
* Secure cyberspace
* Enhance virtual reality
* Advance personalized learning
* Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

Any list of far reaching predictions is usually way off, but for something so broad as things to engineer in the next 100 years, would be things like:

* Get everyone to get along through broad cultural education
* Increase global quality of education by 2 orders of magnitude
* Make more good food and make it ridiculously cheap (including water)
* Make eating better and exercise absolutely foolproof, including reducing people’s dependence on drugs (the legal kind)
* Find a transportation fuel to replace oil
* Get the US over its aversion to fission

I don’t that I know the proper spelling of hare for that colloquialism. I tried to find it online, but failed. :(

I had a cool three day weekend, spent in San Diego with Chad and Karen. Hence the title. Only on Friday did I decide to see about flying down, emailing them and making flight arrangements. So I flew down Saturday morning. They met me at the airport and we did the touristy stuff, walking down the coast, getting to see a lot of marine mammals, and on Sunday we went to the San Diego zoo, which was exceptional.

But today was another story. I was in the foulest of moods starting somewhere in the San Diego airport. As I was standing near the gate, waiting on my C group to be called to lineup, a young woman was standing next to me. As she moved to stand closer to where the line was about to form for her group, I got a little better look at her. To which I must say that she was absolutely gorgeous. I tried to see where she was sitting as I tried to find my own seat, but to no luck. I told myself that if I saw her at the baggage claim that I would tell her as much. And again I didn’t see her. That put me in a foul mood by itself. Then, after riding the shuttle to the long term parking and finally finding my car, hardly remembering what it looked like, I go to pop open the trunk to put my luggage in. The automatic trunk lock doesn’t seem to work. That’s odd, I think to myself. Perhaps the battery’s dead. No, surely not. I open the trunk with the key and put my stuff in. I then move to the driver’s side door and try the automatic locks. Again nothing. I curse to myself. I open the door with the key, get in, and turn it over. Nothing. No clicking, not a peep. So, I call the 800 number on my key chain. They say that it’ll be 1 hr. Wonderful. To make matters worse, both of my cell phones are beeping at me saying low battery. I rifle through my things to find the car charger, wondering if it was such a good idea putting off charging them. I plug it in to start charging my phone. The phone doesn’t even recognize that it’s plugged in. Doubly wonderful. So, as I’m waiting for the Roadside Assistance to take their sweet time, I decide to hedge my bet. I walk over to the exit pavilions and ask the teller if the staff can jump start my car. She says that it’ll be at least 15 minutes. 15 is way better than 60. I never kept track of exactly how long all of these things took. But when the airport people finally came, they came almost at the exact same moment that the tow truck arrived. I’m sure I couldn’t have pulled that off if I had tried. The airport guy puts the fancy jump start kit onto my battery. I waited a few seconds and it immediately turns over. Oh, and as he’s hooking the device up to the terminals he mentions, “tips are greatly appreciated”. Sure, I bet they are. I have a 1, a 10 and a 20. I begrudgingly give him the 10 and don’t ask for change. I then go over to talk to the very nice tow truck driver. I felt kind of bad making them come out all that way for nothing. I ask him if I owe him anything, as he’s already seen what’s going on. No, I don’t owe him anything. He starts to drive off, but then remembers that it might be a good thing to take down the particulars. He does and proceeds to really leave. I get in myself, payout, and leave. So my day, while starting perfectly with getting to sleep in, somehow managed to go downhill pretty quickly. My foul mood was only moderately lived so has mostly warn off, but I still feel a bit of a twinge from the ordeal. :/

It was sort of funny flying on Super Tuesday. I woke up at like 6:30a so I could be at the polls by 7a, so I could catch my cab at 8a, so I could catch my plane at 10:30a. I left to vote a little late (at 7:15a) and as luck would have it, there was an uber-long line. I finally reached the head of the line around 8a, and quickly voted. In fact, I voted on a Diebold electronic voting machine. I give it a 50/50 chance that my vote was actually cast for the person I was voting for. I voted for Ron Paul, btw… A little late for the cab, but made it to the airport/California fine. The flight was pretty packed, and I had to sit between two older ladies. Other than the soreness from sleeping sitting up and practically not moving for 5 hours, I made it ok. I did watch CNBC the entire time (well, between napping). I probably learned more about the candidates in those few hours than I knew leading up to then.

I’ve already had In-N-Out a couple of times. :)

I also totally biffed it on one of the bicycles they have for us to ride between buildings. Late last night I was returning a bike to the building next to where I parked. I attempted to pop the bike onto a curb, but failed. :( Between the height of the curb and the fact that these have old school brakes where you pedal backwards to brake, I stopped abruptly and catapulted myself over the handle bars. Good thing nobody was watching (although I bet it would have been humorous to have seen — after I was confirmed ok, of course). I only came away with a few scrapes on my hands and a little soreness from catchin my whole weight + momentum on my hands on some concrete. Oh well, I’ll know to think twice before attempting that curb again. And, luckily today, no further bicycle accidents. :)

I totally forgot my Netflix at home. What a waste. :( But I did watch Seduced and Abandoned, which was ok, but I had a bit of trouble following why certain things were going on. Probably would need to watch it again…

I’m not sure what’s up with these short posts as of late. I did get a haircut today. It looks pretty good, I think; nice and short. And although it’s not a precision haircut, it will definitely work. I also got today a 1u Gruber from the sisters. It is awesome, already installed, and managing my cable very nicely. :) In other news, I’ll be in California starting next week, from February 5 through 23.

Since I’ve been lusting after a long lens for the England trip, I noticed at Lens Rentals that they were selling one of their XTi bodies for $420, then $400. Over the weekend I told myself that someone else was bound to snatch it up, and that I would be kicking myself for not getting it before they did. Looks like someone finally did sometime today. I guess I cost myself $120 on the deal. But, I’m not kicking myself as much as I thought I would.

Hmm, I seem to recall a specific instance of putting the trailer on in the rain in Galveston… :)

… is doomed.

It snowed here. Twice. Once during the day on Wednesday, then sometime this morning. It’s a nice feeling to walk outside, and, magic, snow! The roads weren’t bad when I was out, but I would imagine early Thursday morning was bad, because not too long after it started snowing on Wednesday afternoon, it started raining/sleeting. I’m not sure how cold the ground was that morning, but I bet there was a decent amount of ice.

In other news, I’m considering finally getting some new computer innards. I’m tired of running out of memory and not having dual monitors. :( I’m on the fence between just upgrading the minimum, or getting a decent upgrade. Also, when I stepped outside to take some pictures of the snow, my camera acted up like it did over Christmas. I still have no idea what’s wrong with it, but now I’m leaning towards just getting a 400d for the trip to England. The last thing I want to happen is constantly fight with my camera for the duration.

The past two nights I have opened the door to my patio and been entranced by the sound of rain and thunder. Somehow I am drawn to just sit and listen.

I took the plunge on Sunday to go with Wesley to England. The past couple of days I’ve had buyer’s remorse (as usual), but only a twinge now remains. I’m looking forward to some real time off, and perhaps I will rent some nice glass. A $1500 70-200mm f/2.8 IS for ~$150 for 2 weeks anyone? We could go halves. You know you want to…

After a four month hiatus, the photoblog’s been updated. A new pic is up now, and it’s on autopilot through 1/7. Enjoy. Apologies to the Markhams for not posting pictures of the baby sooner… :)

Leaving for Canyon in the morning (bright and early at 7:30 am). Should be there around 11am. I still haven’t packed or know if I still have laundry to do. Could be a short night. I’m going to try to procrastinate doing laundry as much as possible by organizing and posting photos. :)

I was trying to remember all the movies I’ve watching that I haven’t posted about. I thought there were more, but I can’t remember any more. I have a couple of oldies sitting by the tv I really need to watch, but spend most of my free tv time trying to get through JAG.

• Disturbia. Not like Rear Window (which was good). Decent movie though, good commentary. The chick was uber-hot (and apparently single at the time of the taping of the commentary…).
• The Best Years of Our Lives. Cool movie that’s still relevant today.
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This one’s a keeper, pilgrim.
• The Birds. I thought it not as good as is generally accepted. I “watched” it before in my music in movies appreciation class, but slept through most of it. :)
• Jaws. I have no recollection of watching this in its entirely before, but just did. A classic.

Man, I have too many movies to watch still…

I’m totally posting this to make sure I have a post in December. :)

Dashboard Confessional’s Don’t Wait.

I couldn’t stand it anymore last weekend. I took most of the day on Sunday the 7th to clean the apartment. It was time. I managed to clean the floors, the toilet, and the tub, but no counters or sinks. I actually cleaned the Formica in the kitchen and bathroom on my hands and knees since I don’t have a mop, and fastidiously vacuumed the carpet (although I don’t know how much it helped). Towards the end I was wishing that I some of that pre-vacuum powdery stuff to freshen up the place. Maybe I should get some candles to smell up the place, too…

I will be in Canyon over this coming weekend, flying in Saturday and flying out Sunday so I can see the new niece. I’m not staying long this trip, but I’ll be back once a month for three months straight, so I can’t see much complaining.

I’ve spent most of this weekend and last week trying to get a few more systems up and working at home. I got hadoop working on a couple of Xen nodes, so that was cool. I got their demos to work, but then I couldn’t really think of anything to do with the new found programming platform, so it’s gone unused. I’ve also been trying to get SSL working for ldap. I think I’m finally starting to understand the whole certificate authority and SSL at a macro level, but there’s always still more to learn. I was maybe hoping to get ldap over SSL working pretty well and maybe even kerberized nfs working, and I’ve made some progress, but not as much as I’d like.

I also managed to actually watch a movie. I don’t know how long I’ve had the Maltese Falcon from Netflix, but by now it’s probably been months. I saw “CashBack”, which was ok. A decent independent film, which had its moments, but not too much to write home about. I also finally tried to play “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” but it had a deformity in the disc, so it was unplayable. I’ve been slowly going through JAG, and am currently in season 3. I guess on the surface it’s a pretty cheesy show (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but it has some long running allusions and story lines that are slowly unraveling, which is why I’m watching in the first place. I guess that I could read online what happens in the end, but where’s the fun in that? Anyway, it’s nice to have this very episodic show carry on these threads and morsels they pay off every once in a while. What was quite odd, though, was the very last episode of season 1. I watched this episode, not knowing anything about it. It was a cliffhanger at the end of the season. To be expected, correct? Well, I start watching the next season, and it doesn’t pick up where it left off. I check online, and it was never aired and the conclusion never written. I was miffed to say that least. Well, they didn’t totally forget about it and actually reused it, re-wrote the story and made a whole new episode out of. Not too bad if you ask me, as there were definitely some tricky and very fine lines to walk to pull it off, which I think they did.

Anyway, it’s 3am. Why am I still awake?

I have a niece.
That is all.

Scrubs starts Oct 25, Battlestar Galactica returns Nov 24, but wtf?! Lost returns Feb 2008. Why must Lost continue to do this to us?

In other news, you band nerds out there might have run across a teaching book called Fussell Exercises for Ensemble Drill. Lately I’ve been longing for the good olde days when I played everday and was in practice. I think it’s directly correlated to all of the JAG I’ve been watching, with a march in every episode. So, in the string of books I wished I hadn’t sold back to the bookstore (even though I never owned this one — I should have stolen it :) ), I went ahead and bought it online. I chose a retailer on brand recognition (JW Pepper). I pick ground shipping because I don’t need it right away. A couple of days pass, and it arrives at my doorstep. I think in passing, wow, that was fast. I open up the envelope, and it has a return label (because they’re efficient), and I notice that it says Lithia Springs as the city. I think to myself, hmm that’s odd; they printed the wrong city and accidentally printed my city. Then, I look at some of the other documentation and realize that my music was in fact shipped from what can be no greater than 2 miles from my house. I spent $5 on ground shipping, which represented more than half of what the book actually cost. Had I known, I could have just drove by there, as I pass by them like everyday. What’s even more curious is the fact that they are a stones throw away from a FedEx depot. I guess they have their reasons, but if it was me, from a logistics perspective, I’d have gone with FedEx instead of UPS. :)

It’s been quite a dry spell, here at the ol’ blog. What juicy bits can I dig up to tell…

I was in California for 2 weeks, from August 27 through September 9. Looking back, it was a perfectly fine trip. But I felt pretty odd about it just before and during. I really just didn’t want to go in the first place. I never really understood why, but I put off packing as late as humanly possible (I started packing at like 1am the night before I left). My heart just wasn’t in it. Then I had this string of a couple of bad days. And then I guess for whatever reason I started feeling better, and at the end of the 2 weeks, I didn’t want to leave. Which seems altogether odd to me, but perhaps it’s the change that I shy away from and not really the actual trip or the destination.

Upon my arrival back to Atlanta, my car promptly didn’t start. No lights, no nothing. The guy who picked me up from the airport was finally able to jump start me. I let it sit for a bit and eventually headed towards home. I drove around for a bit, picked up dinner, and searched for an open auto parts store, only to find none. Once I got home I let it sit and charge for a bit. I then turned it off so I could test to see if I would be stranded again in the morning. It immediately returned to a no lights, no nothing state. The next morning I managed to get someone to jump me off again and headed to the Napa store. They checked the battery, found it dead, so we replaced it. I guess while it was pretty straightforward, it was still a pain.

My car still needs new tires. I continue to put it off. I have no real idea how many tires I really need and I will eventually have to get new tires before I head up to the East Coast Wesleyite thing. I definitely don’t trust them enough now to go all the way there and back.

My video card started being very flaky on me. X would freeze, and start using 100% cpu. You could still move the mouse, but not click on anything, and the keyboard wouldn’t work. You could still ssh into it and restart. What was worse is that eventually it got so bad that it would do this 5 minutes after boot. A 5 minute usable window isn’t that usable. I got another video card from a friend, but it’s not dual headed, so it’s not too much fun.

Also, I thought it would be nifty to run a self-test on my ups. Not a good idea. Now it says I need to get the battery replaced (Emergency! Batteries have failed on UPS argento. Change them NOW). Not a good sign. I guess it’s had a good run, but I’d rather not spend money on stuff like that. I’ve been needing a second one anyway, so if I got one, I’d really need to get two.

And, since I was having all these issues with argento, I’m thinking that now might be a good time to buy new guts for it.

Well, I did manage to read Freakonomics while I was gone (actually I read a bunch of it on the way back on the plane).

I will be signing a 3 month lease, so my rent is going up to the “market rate” of $730. I continue to have this looming question of how soon I should go to California. This decision has been especially hard for me. I really don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t think I ever mentioned it here, but I got a new manager way back when at the first of July. It means I’m officially doing different stuff than I was before and working for a group based out of Mountain View. All in all a very good thing.

I managed to go biking this late afternoon/early evening. I think I got started a little after 7 and rode for the usual 30 minutes. Since I’ve been back, I only recall going riding once, which was the Monday or Tuesday that I returned. I managed a little longer trip that time, but then on Saturday I had the staples pulled out, so I figured it best not to aggravate it with the help. Which means that it’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve ridden, which isn’t the best of things.

I will be heading back to Mountain View for two weeks starting Monday. I picked up a bike shipping box for my bike, so I have the possibility of taking it with me, which could be interesting. I’d love to bike around campus on my own bike or even ride it the couple of miles to work.

I won’t say that I’m second guessing the glasses, but half wondering why I picked form over function. I’m slowly getting used to having the frame within my eyesight, having to refocus outside of the lens if I want to watch my food go all the way from the plate into my mouth, and having the frame smack dab in the middle of the keyboard. It’s very odd, too, that I now have two pairs of perfectly good glasses. I don’t think this has ever happened before, as new glasses were always the result of a significant degradation in vision or due to breakage. Now I have a choice of glasses. I probably should put the old ones away and lock away the key so I’m not tempted to wear them.

For [what seems like] the first time since I moved in to my apartment in Atlanta, I browned some ground hamburger a couple of days ago. Normally I don’t cook because I think food is dumb and not worth fussing over nor cleaning up after. But I was pretty hungry when I was picking up some Zest, so things sort of got out of hand. Anyway, about halfway through the browning I realized that I didn’t have a colander to drain the meat. I could have sworn that I owned one at some time in the past. Maybe it was too far gone, or maybe I left it to Chris. Who knows these things? I got it drained ok, only to realize that I also needed a pan lid for my iron skillet to finish cooking my Hamburger Helper^TM Beef Stroganoff. I managed to slip by using a plate as a cover, but you can imagine how hot the plate got. Speaking of hot, I think my leftovers burned my tongue more in the 3 days I had them than in the past 2 years (or maybe it just feels like it…). I also think I would have preferred to use a wooden spoon to stir, but the turner did the job, albeit a little too bachelor-y for my tastes.

While I was in Canyon, I managed to hit up several doctors including a dermatologist, a barber, and an optometrist. Ok, a barber’s not really a doctor, but I had to duck out of my dentist appointment to see the dermatologist. I’ve been needing a new pair of glasses for longer than I’d like to admit, as they had become pretty scratched up and the coating had become worn a bunch. And so I was going to the optometrist without expecting my eyes to have changed, nor to actually buy any new glasses. Honestly I wondered more than once why I had gotten my Mother to make the appointment at all. But, after the runaround the several eye care centers had given her while trying to make my appointment, I figured the least I could do would be to show up. So, I had my eye exam at like noon (which was like after “the doctor’s last appointment of the day” — seriously how much more could he have been slacking?). So I guess I effectively made him push back his lunch, and if I messed up his lunch plans for that day, he definitely didn’t mention it and was in fact exceedingly nice. The result of the exam was that my eyesight actually got better, not worse, if you can imagine that. I gained some astigmatism, though. So, he advised that since I did sit in front of a computer all day that it would behoove me to keep my spectacles up to date.

My old pair of glasses has to be, I’d say 4–5 years old. I got them in College Station when an old pair broke one day. My current/old pair had a pretty good run, and I was just waiting for them to get sat on or break in two or some other random happenstance which would force my hand. So it was nice that I now have a really decent backup pair that fits me well and is a very close prescription. So, he said I should get some new ones, which obviously had been on my mind, but that day I wasn’t too terribly in the mood to shop for new glasses. Plus I didn’t have a vision insurance card thingy, so I wasn’t quite sure how much it would cost me out of pocket. Which wound up being moot as I made a phone call and got the info and it saved me a bunch of money and hassle. So, I’m looking at frames, thinking about all of the times that Max counseled me to get contacts or new glasses. I sort of gravitate toward the smaller frames and start trying on frames. I do this for a little while before one of the frame-fitter-ladies comes around to help me, so by this time I have a couple already picked out and in mind of what I would prefer. She starts to help me pick something out and I try on those that she thinks might look good. I shoot down the really trendy/throwback ones. I’m trying my best to cling to a not completely tiny frame. Like I said, I wasn’t particularly in a shopping mood, so I somehow manage to whittle it down to two pairs. The one that I like best, which are definitely smaller than my old pair and have some round at the corners. And the other pair that I think my mother and the young lady helping us prefer better, which are even smaller being more square in the corners. I honestly couldn’t tell you the frame colors of either. I think neither was black. They had this nifty little camera booth thing where you could take pictures of yourself so you could directly compare. I was pretty firm that I personally like my choice better, but wasn’t sure which one I should go with. The girl working with us mentioned that she could probably get one of the other young ladies working to get a second opinion. So, just then there happened to be a gaggle of the female techs walking by. So, she asked them for their opinion, starting with the pair I liked best, then to the other pair. The response was immediate and unanimous. Immediately when I put on the second pair, they all in chorus said “yes, definitely that one”. I was definitely taken aback by their response, being so quick and definitive. I figured that all these women knew better than I how best I looked, so I caved. I’m sure the fact that the young lady tech who did the first part of my eye exam was rather cute and happened to be in this group made no difference whatsoever. :)

Since it was through my insurance, it’s taken a couple of weeks for the insurance provider to make them, ship them to Amarillo, get them inspected, then finally shipped out to me, which I got today when I got home. I think the frames will take more getting used to than the actual prescription (which I can hardly tell a difference). [Warning run on sentence ahead!] But the frames are small enough that without moving my head too much, the frame is just where my hands are on the keyboard when I need to readjust or double check hand position, so that will definitely take some getting used to to have to move my head down a little further when I want to look in that particular direction or just get used to the line and blurriness. Only time will tell whether I like them or not. And somehow I doubt that they will somehow magically conjure up a wife for me. :(

Blogging about talking about blogging about fulfilling Josh’s prophesy of blogging about talking about blogging Josh’s prophesy. :)

All of the trips/visits/weddings/receptions all went off pretty much without a hitch. I realized after the fact that I didn’t actually get a chance to congratulate Ben and LouLou personally and properly at their reception…

FYI, I’ll be in Canyon starting tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon and in College Station starting Wednesday morning.

I had the strongest craving for Laynes tonight. Already craving Canyon/Amarillo/CS/Texas food. :)

Has anyone noticed? The first pic added July 3, with daily postings through 8/5.

I am now the proud owner of a full height telco rack. I have been keeping my eyes peeled for ones on Craigslist as of late. One came available, and I availed myself of it. So, that was yesterday; I picked it up. Today, after spending some 4th of July time at a friend’s house, I went to Home Depot to procure myself some casters. Now, I know that I have some pretty good friends in the caster business, but I wasn’t really in the mood to wait, so I bought me some overpriced casters (~$28 worth). It is worth noting the wood, nuts/bolts, screws, and casters cost me more than the cost of the actual rack ($53 as opposed to $50). I made 2 critical missteps in the building of my rolling telco rack. First, I thought I had everything worked out beforehand, and I was close, but added 7 inches when I shouldn’t have. So, the boards are a little longer than I would have liked. And second, the holes for the casters are spaced on center roughly 3 1/2″ apart. Now, for those of you following along at home, this would be the width of a 2×4. So, I wound up basically toe-nailing these very large lag screws in. Which I guess worked out in the end, because looking at it now, the weight would have been poorly set, and might have caused trouble down the line. So, it ain’t pretty, and it’s rather tall, but it is more steady than I thought it would be. Well, that last part didn’t make much sense, and neither did the original design, but the actual implementation works, so there you go.

Like most things, since I bought the rack, I’ve spent another $50 on extra parts, and now I’m pondering rack mounted power, nice rack mounted switches, chair mats for my casters, cable management, rack screws, and the list goes on… Once I get everything racked, I’ll see about posting some pictures.

I figured I would share with the world, knowing how all the ladies love a man who has his own telco rack… in his living room…

Yet another weekend has gone by without me going through my backlog of photos and lining them up for the photoblog. I guess I’m a little overwhelmed by the sheer number.

The rest of my weekend was quite good. Went to a lan party Friday night, riding Saturday afternoon, an early 4th of July party afterwards, and rested today, watching some Studio 60, Sabrina, and The Unforgiven. Sabrina was good, and The Unforgiven was ok, but I think I mean to get Unforgiven, not The Unforgiven. Silly me. I thought that the episode of Studio 60 I watched might have been the last, and looking it up now, it was in fact the series finale. Sad that it didn’t work out for Aaron and Tommy, but I suppose that they’ve had other good runs.

If you ever have the opportunity to lounge around in the pool for half of the day and into the wee hours of the morning, I highly recommend it. I don’t recall ever doing that before, but it really was posh. I suppose it’s like being at the lake, but this was somehow different. I dunno. Anyway, highly recommended; esp with some good and very chill friends.

The regular lake party was also this weekend, and even though I couldn’t be there, I did manage to help Drew and Nancy find their way. I don’t know what the odds are that when you call me I’m not sitting in front of a computer, but Nancy managed to, and caught me driving to this party. I was, though, able to help them get to the party, with my trusty stash of maps to basically everywhere I’ve driven in the past many years. I’m pretty sure I would have no problem finding Max’s lakehouse or even getting to that particular barn for barn dance. At one time, I could have driven out to Max’s blindfolded, but I would imagine now I would have a little trouble remembering the exact roads to take. Although, I bet I could find my way, if only by my gut. So, I was driving up I-75, while looking at hand drawn maps and nice maps of Texas. An odd experience to be driving, giving people directions in another state. Chalk up another good story.

[tags]photoblog, lan party, movies, pool party, directions[/tags]

Jessica and Mike
Sarah and Jarrodd
Chad and Elisabeth
Drew and Kellie
Colby and Elysia
Dan and Paige
Brittany and Nate

Babies:
Laurie
Laci
Summer
Becky
Mindy

[tags]babies, engagements[/tags]

(a half-update as blatantly stolen from Robert’s facebook)

Ed and Kristen – May 19
Michael and Erin – June 8
Josh and Jaimie – June 16
Josh and Katie – July 7
Sam and ??? – July 7
Pat and Jennifer – August 4
Ben and Lou Lou – August 11

Smosh, just found your new blog. Will be keeping tabs. I know you’re on your honeymoon and all, so when you get back and check this, please leave a comment with some gift registry info, so I can send you guys something.

Update: Nevermind Josh, I figured it out.

Congrats! Sorry I couldn’t be there to throw stuff at you. :) I know you guys have a wonderful life together ahead of you.

NO!!!!! Goodbye, Mr. Wizard. You will be missed.

I really hate it when I can’t shake that sinking feeling in my stomach. I helped tow a co-worker just after work. Nothing happened, but it was definitely a little hairy at the onset (while going down what turned out to be a much larger hill than I thought — at about 30–35 mph). I took some turns a little wide, since we were moving so fast (so we got honked at a little) and at the end of another hill’s climb, we had a good number of cars stacked up behind us. We finally got to our destination (with a U-turn even), at which time I was informed that towing a car like that is illegal in Georgia. So, no harm done and no tickets, but it was a little loose and fast for my hindsight and definitely harrowing at the time. It seems like the older I get and the more experience I accrue, the more I can play things much more by ear and worry less about being absolutely perfect and seem to get away with it. :)

I continue to be incapable of going to bed before 2am. And apparently I cannot get myself to tidy up my apartment. I half tried over the weekend, but never really got around to it.

I am also less pissed at OpenSolaris, but have narrowed down my filer issues to primarily nfsd crapping out under heavy usage, causing zfs to freak out and not do destroy or snapshot operations in any timely manner, pretty much requiring a reboot. Time to learn about tuning nfs under Solaris (and why isn’t it tweaked to begin with?).

Apparently my website was hacked more than I thought. I’m blaming Wordpress/galleries.

I biked Sunday, yesterday and today.

I’m still hating on OpenSolaris.

I RMA’ed a drive today.

This is getting positively ridiculous. I absolutely must stop going to bed after 3+ am.

Yes, well, I still have valiantly managed somehow to not post about California and stuff I have more than once thought about and even blogged about blogging. I suppose now I have blogged about not blogging.

Otherwise, the apartment was still here. First things first, I got my network back in order. Pesky network. I’ve been fighting a lot with Solaris over the past couple of days. Honestly I have no idea why everyone sings its praises, because I think it sucks. Sane logging is nowhere to be found. Oh, it’ll tell you that a service is trying to be started/stopped/started/stopped, but it won’t tell you why. Wouldn’t you think that important? And, it doesn’t always like to completely reboot. It just hangs for no good reason. I have to manually reset with a dumb paperclip a time or two. SSH is wack sometimes and will ask for my private key password multiple times, even after I’ve entered it and ssh-agent is running. Samba is crazy slow. Practically unusable under Windows 2000, my testbed. I added a re-shared the directories on argento (via an nfs mount) and it was lightning fast. I don’t know why Solaris hates me. Also, the snapshot directories don’t show up with normal names under Windows. I don’t know what that is either. Also, I keep forgetting that you can’t take snapshots during a resilvering, which is terribly annoying. </rant>

California on the whole was quite amazing/terrific/awesome/spectacular/exceptional/wonderful. Definitely a lot of people networking, learning, and getting to do cool new things (and with it bookoos(sp) more things to do and manage and keep track of). Like I’ve said before, I am still amazed by the California landscape. I’m pretty sure my first trip, I didn’t ever think/realize that there were mountains. There are. Little ones and big ones and pretty ones. Lots of trees, really nice weather, and generally a very temperate climate. Even so, for all its proximity to the Pacific along with its vast coastline, it was much more dry and brown than I would have thought. Like West Texas BrownTM. For as much farm, cattle, and tree grove land that I saw while driving through the valley, I would have expected there to be more rain and greener pasture grass. Even up near Yosemite, it was quite dry, I thought. I passed over many a water canal, which I pretty much think to be preposterous. The whole concept is so foreign to me. Why don’t they cover the canals?

Driving through all that land also made me think about how big California is and how rural the majority of the landmass must be. It’s like the 5th biggest economy in the world or something, so I’m sure that agriculture plays quite a large role. But when I think of California, I think LA/SF/Hollywood. I don’t think small to medium farmers trying to make a living, driving very large and very expensive farm implements and driving diesel guzzling trucks. I wonder how all the farmers feel about the exorbitant gas prices in Cali. I do think, though, that it was cheaper in the rural parts than in the city.

The people I met were quite normal and temperate people. Of course, I just interacted with people from Google, but they weren’t all crazy, liberal people. I’m sure there were a hand full, but that’s to be expected everywhere. Which, I would imagine that the liberalness is prevalent in any major city. And even while more so in California, and less so in Texas, bigger cities I would think would breed a liberal slant to things.

I am happy to be back (in my own bed and the like), but was definitely sad to leave. I did get kindof sick, but I also got kindof better kindof quickly, so all is kindof well.

Drama surrounding females.

In other news, I’m getting sick, I think. Right before I head home. Awesome. Scratchy throat, sinus pressure, my nose is starting to drip, and sinus drainage, which makes me feel sick to my stomach. :(

Me too. How did I wind up here?

Yeah, so I basically spent the entire day porting TheLucid Typo theme to Wordpress. If anybody has an opinion one way or the other on how they like it, be sure to leave a comment. I like the theme a lot, and it wasn’t too hard to port. I wonder if searching is a little hampered with the whole “live search” functionality, but that’s probably up to you guys, not so much me. Also, you can always just search with Goog…

All of the ladies reading this will just have to deal with this post. I usually try not to be too sexist, but damn. There was a young woman at In-n-Out who was drop dead gorgeous. I mean hot. I mean crazy-stupid-hot. CRAZY-STUPID-HOT. In hindsight, I wished I would have told her as much, but I thought about it only as I was leaving. I mean, how long can you sit by yourself with no food left on your plate at a fast food restaurant and not look conspicuous?

Anyway, I got a haircut, too.

(Did I mention she was hot?)

I managed to break my holster for my phone last night getting out of my car. I’m not really sure how I did it, but I managed to break it good. I am in mourning. My phone is rather tall, so it doesn’t fit in my pocket well. So tonight, I went by Fry’s, a Cingular Store, and Best Buy, all to no avail. So, I bought one on EBay and it’ll be shipped to Atlanta. I didn’t think that it would be prudent to get it shipped somewhere here, only to miss it, and have to go through the rigmarole (wow, I didn’t realize that was an actual word) of getting it shipped back across the country. So, I’ll be out of a holster for a week and a half. The trusty old thing will be missed. :( In the same vein, I have considered buying an exact duplicate of my current phone, in case I ever destroy it (like I did the last one on the Batman ride at Six Flags over Georgia — good times, good times).

Also, there are ants on my car. Why are there ants on my rental car?

My actual route through Yosemite.

I still haven’t blogged about my general thoughts on California. Must try to do that.

So Maker Faire was pretty neat. But, I think it’s not quite as interesting in person as it appears from pictures and accounts online. Most things presented have a very hacked together feel, and while well designed, most lacked a general sense of elegance. I guess the older I get, the more I feel compelled to engineer things that are exceptionally elegant and serve a larger, long-term purpose, while still using things not quite in the way they were intended to be used. I took some pictures, but as always, I fee like I didn’t take enough. Looking at some of the other pictures that have been posted online, I’ve come to realize that I should have literally shot everything. I had pondered going back today and taking at least 2 pictures of every exhibit. I would have imagined it would have taken me hours to accomplish, but at the end, I think I would have had a good number of good pictures. And would have been quite a good photography exercise. But, I don’t think I’ll head back up there. It’s already mid-afternoon, and it closes at 5pm, so I would imagine that a lot of people will be starting to pack up soon. I was pretty good about taking more than one picture of just about everything, and I tried to mix each up some, trying something different after a couple of shots. I was pretty acutely aware of the amount of ambient light (or lack thereof), as most of the exhibits were indoors. Hopefully next time when I’m in an exhibition setting like this, I’ll be a little more diligent about making my own pictures, instead of just snapping pics of the obviously interesting stuff.

Maker Faire is this weekend! Nobody told me! And I’m in SF! Must… try… to… swing… by…

So, despite all of the Yosemite nonsense, I did make it back to Mountain View. I played around with Google Maps today to see if I could map out my actual path. It was absurd (my actual route, not Google Maps). I half wish I would have had a GPS with me so I could really easily plot my course. In addition, if my camera would also have been GPS aware, it would make it really easy to make waypoints and make an awesome KML file to share the location data of all of my pictures data with everyone. I’ll try and work on that (sort of). I at the very least need to post the pictures eventually.

Chad called me this weekend while I was driving back. Made me think some. I need to post about it soon, before I forget it all.

Holy shnikees. Yay I didn’t die in the wilderness! Ok, let me back up. I had to check out of my current digs at a posh hotel at noon today. I had been playing around with the idea of driving up to Yosemite some weekend, because, well, I should, and who knows if or when I’ll ever be out here like this again. On Friday over lunch, someone from work suggested I go see Lake Tahoe or Monterey. This fit somewhat into my previous leanings. I printed out my plan, to drive up through Yosemite, then up to Tahoe, then back down through Sacramento (my plan). A sort of long journey, over 600 miles, but doable in a weekend, right?

Ok, so the first leg went well. I managed my first U-y and thought it a good sign (as no trip is complete without one). But the directions got a little hairy. By this time I hadn’t gotten a map of California, so I stopped at a convenience store, bought some dp, a full map of California, and one of those cool easy fold maps of Northern California. These would prove invaluable by the end of the day. So just after I stopped to buy the maps and got back on the road, I had a better idea of where to head, I exited and mostly followed the signs. After a lot of forested and windy driving, I arrived at Yosemite. I paid my $20 entry fee, saw some Sequoias, drove around the park, saw the major sites, took a bunch of pictures, and bought a t-shirt. By the time I had done all this, it was getting dark. I had in my mind that I was going to drive all the way across it, and then stumble upon a place to crash. This is where the flaw in my plans started to show. I drove, by myself, under a moonless night, seeing very few cars. Man it was pitch black. And super windy. It would have been better if I would have had a car to follow or lead, but no real luck. Mile after mile I saw no one. I would see parked cars every once in a while, which was unnerving. I would hope they were camping for the night. So that was pretty hairy in and of itself. I dunno why, but my mind was really racing, and I kept having these irrational fears about having an accident or running into a bear or something, I dunno. I finally made it through the park. Every bit more of civilization I saw I relished. The first town I ran into (Lee Vining) was totally booked up. Plenty of No Vacancy signs in the windows at the several lodges in town. Laurie helped me out a bunch and called around to see if there were any free rooms. I started to head south, not really knowing what I would find. The cities seem to be few and small and far between. And they don’t put up too much signage on how far the next town is. They’ll say that Los Angeles is 350 miles away, but not what the next town is. :( Anyway, Laurie had found out that Mammoth would be a likely target. I saw a sign for Mammoth and took it. Every time ventured out, I felt like I was taking my life in my own hands, veering off the beaten path so it were. By this time I still had a quarter of a tank of gas, which would net me maybe 100 miles, but who knew how far I would have to go to find a place to stay, and if I’d have to drive really far, only to have to turn around. Needless to say, I was freaking out. But, my hunch paid off, and I finally saw a city limit sign for Mammoth Lakes. I took a few good turns, and finally found the hotels Laurie had been picking out online. I figured I wouldn’t cut any corners after my harrowing experience of the night, so I stayed with the known, and am writing this from my hotel room at a Holiday Inn. So, I didn’t die. I didn’t run out of gas. I still haven’t had any more supper than my snickers from the Yosemite general store. :( Plus, now I’ve driven through the park, but I didn’t see it! I’m thinking I should just fore go Lake Tahoe and just retrace my steps. Much more the safe way to go. Plus, I’m tired of driving. I’ve gone over 300 miles today. I just want to be home. I’ve been feeling more and more home-sick for Atlanta. Between the added stress of new and more job responsibility, living out of a hotel, having a rental car, I guess it’s finally getting to me. It’s been nice to have an entire room and bathroom to myself at the hotel, but there’s also something nice about having nice cable and having someone around that makes me feel like I shouldn’t get up at 1pm and should try and see the city and stuff. Anyway, I’m rambling and I need to get some sleep, ’cause I have an 11am checkout time. Yay for not dieing in the wilderness!

I’m probably way overdue for an update. If you couldn’t tell from my last post, I will be staying through June 2. Overall this is a good thing for me. As I was getting to the end of my original 3 weeks, I wasn’t really looking forward to leaving and going back to Atlanta. The opportunity to stay was confirmed and then finalized. At which point I almost had second thoughts — mainly between bills and having to make arrangements (which wound up being a pain in the ass cause I didn’t plan far enough in advance) and the newness of the new job wearing off and the eminent repetition starts to set in. Oh well, them’s the breaks. But now I’m over it and glad I’m still here.

I don’t have any real plans for this weekend. The only things I really had to get done were one to do laundry (man I was scraping the bottom of the barrel) and two, to return/rerent my rental car. Budget has some nonsense about not being able to rent a car for more than a month. So, I had to drive back up to SFO, return the car, then rent another. I suppose all is not lost, though. In the trade, I used my Fastbreak status to quickly get a car without a reservation, so that was cool. And, since I had recently signed up for said Fastbreak-yness, I had a cool double upgrade coupon. So, I’m paying less than I was, and I got upgraded from my stupid PT Cruiser to a new Mustang. How cool is that? Anyway, the Mustang will take some getting used to, but having never driven a sports car (if you can call a new Mustang a sports car), it should be an enlightening several weeks.

In these several new cars, I have already come to some enlightenment regarding car design. One of the first things I noticed different about the PT Cruiser was the automatic locking doors once you got past X mph. That’s cool and all that the manufacturer feels like increasing my safety by locking my doors, but what they should do in addition to this is unlock the damn doors when you the thing in park or whatever. I don’t like having to unlock the doors again when I get out. The other thing is about surfing radio stations. I guess I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to the Yukon. The PT Cruiser didn’t have anything for my hand to rest on while pushing the seek button. My hand rests rather comfortably on my shifter in the Yukon… And then, when I started driving around the Mustang, I realized how it’s a travesty when the designer places the seek button and the volume knob so far apart that you have to move your hand. It should not be this way. In the Yukon, my hand can stay in one place, seek forward and backward, and has easy access to the volume knob for all of those annoyingly loud commercials or stations. Anyway, things to look out for in your next car purchase.

I did watch Hot Fuzz the other weekend and Spiderman 3 on this past Friday. Hot Fuzz was awesome. Highly recommended. Spiderman 3 was decent.

Why the hell do I always seem to cut it so close? I managed to get some laundry done tonight, but I missed the important things this week like actually changing my flight. I did manage to get approval to stay, I just didn’t get around to actually finalizing all of my plans. So now I am between a rock and a hard place. Had I managed to call the travel agency during their normal business hours sometime this week, I probably could have just paid the base change flight fee of $50. But now I can either pay an extra $80 to Delta for the privilege or I can pay an “emergency” fee to connect to the travel agent after hours and maybe or maybe not pay the $80 difference in flight price. I’m confused, though, because it’s so far out, I can’t imagine why the flight would cost so much more. Now I’m still procrastinating, because I don’t know exactly what to do… So now, not only have I forgotten to rebook the flight, I’m trying to remember if I’ve missed anything else. I think I’ve paid all of my bills back home, but I’m not 100% sure. I probably should pay off my credit cards, too, and start my expense report. I also really need to get someone to check my apartment. I’ve got to figure out how to kill some time between when I have to check out tomorrow and when I can check in. I need to figure out how to check out. I have to be out of here by noon. I need to extend my car rental. I need to get someone to fix my network at my apartment. Man, I am super scatter-brained.

Update: Wait! There’s hope! Press 5!
Update: No! No hope! Wait forever then get charged out the arse! But Wait! There’s hope! Delta’s much cheaper! Only $130!
Update: No! It won’t go through online! Must call support!
Update: No! Some dude whose first language isn’t English! Who has a hard time understanding me, and me him! And yet! I changed my fight! Huzzah!

A much-needed change of scenery is in store for you this week when wildfires sweep through your area, charring everything visible from your cell’s tiny window.

So I’ve been meaning to post an update since at least Sunday night, if not Saturday or Friday. For this, I apologize. As usual, I was apprehensive in the beginning about the trip, fitting in and all that. Plus some worry about missing the plane or only thinking I had plane reservations or a rental car waiting for me upon my arrival, when in fact I didn’t. Luckily none of my fears were realized. I booked a sane flight time at 11am, which meant be at the airport at 9. I dropped off the Yukon at the dealer beforehand, so several things could be looked into. I called in a favor from a guy from whom I’ve taken to the airport many a time to take me. I ate some healthy Burger King for breakfast, and all in all didn’t have to wait too terribly long. The flight left on-time. I wound up sitting in the middle of a row of three, which wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. The guys on either side of me weren’t small, either. Somehow my camera bag that normally fits nicely under the seat in front of me didn’t, so I didn’t really feel like I had the best place to put my feet. I slept some in the beginning, but after a while, I couldn’t nap anymore. They had some nifty displays in the headrest in the seat in front of you, but both my airplane and my regular earphones were in my bag, in the overhead compartment. I didn’t really feel like making the guy on the end move, and I didn’t care too terribly much if I could hear CNBC, so I let it be. It was pretty nifty though, that there were so many channels to choose from. I have a hard time believing it was being broadcast in real-time, but I also have a hard time believing they would run yesterday’s news. The times were in sync, so I dunno what to think. All in all the plane trip wasn’t unbearable, but I like never once got up or moved from my seat, and the flight got pretty long after a couple of hours.

Upon arrival, the baggage claiming went quickly, and I returned the call from the dealership. I greenlighted all of the stuff (which wound up being less than I was expecting — yay for being surprisingly less) for the Yukon. I had a Fastbreak rental from Budget, so I pretty much just walked out to the car and left the airport. A pretty straight forward drive down to Mountain View and found the building pretty easily. The problem I ran into, though, was that I didn’t have a cube number, nor had I looked very much at the building layout to see where he sat. I eventually figured it out and got settled. The week has been good and I have been learning a lot of how things work and what to do. All of the people in the group have been really nice and all that, so it’s been good.

There were several guys out from Atlanta doing some other stuff for the first week I was there, so I met up with them some. We went to a steakhouse the first night, which was quite excellent. I’ve been eating mostly on-campus at the cafes, which as advertised is rather posh. I have, though, managed to eat at In-and-Out several times. I can see why I’ve heard such good things about it and why it seems like such a staple out here. I went out to San Fransisco with three other guys Saturday afternoon. We hit a coffee shop, book store, Ethiopian restaurant, and then headed to the Golden Gate. We were trying to hit it just at sunset, but were late. We wound up walking all the way across and back, which is quite a trek. It was nice, though to see the city lit up at night, as well as see the bridge night lit, too. It was rather cold, though, and made me wish I had a little more than the my normal fleece.

The weather has been pretty nice thus far, with a few scattered showers. Just like last time I was here, it can get a little cold, but not too bad during the day, and has been generally nice and sunny.

I thought that I might be able to drop down and see Karen and Chad one of these weekends. Alas, though, California is a rather long state. I pretty much had to rule out the 8hr one-way trip, the 4hr meet-you-half-way trip, and flying down. It is rather unfortunate. I am pondering perhaps a day trip out to some redwood forests that are supposed to be around here. I have taken some pictures, but I doubt that I’ll get them posted any time soon. I did have access to my home network for some time while I was here, but it has since gone away. I’m not really sure what happened and may have to send someone over to investigate. I guess the power went out or something, and things didn’t come up nicely. :(

Oh, and I should mention an oddity with my housing situation. I am in some corporate housing, which means that you stay in one bedroom of a two bedroom apt, sharing with some other person. My person a guy from a European office, who basically brought along his fiancé. This is a little awkward. They’ve been super nice, but still, it is quite odd. For the first several days of my trip, I either didn’t have a roommate, or they would come in after I had gone to bed and leave before me, which worked out great for me. Now, I definitely hesitate some and put off coming back to the apartment.

I did one load of laundry last night, but I should have done two. I also didn’t bring any movies with me, except my Netflix, all of which I managed to watch beforehand. I guess I should change my address and get the next batch to watch. I actually watched a bunch of second rate movies for most of the day on Sunday (including such greats as Under Siege 2), which I haven’t done in forever. I don’t remember the last time I sat around and channel surfed. Probably Christmas at my parents.

I guess that’s enough catch-up for now. I’ve been trying to get to work by 9, which means getting up by 8:15, and leaving by 8:45, since I’m fairly close. Getting up so early though, means I’ve been trying to be in bed by 11pm. Both times are rather abnormal for me, but I think I’m slowly getting acclimated to the subtle shift in sleep/wake schedule.

If you’ve made it reading thus far, you are a trooper! :)

Yeah, so I think this is going to be an odd conglomeration of random thoughts.

1. It snowed tonight in Atlanta. I saw it. Big flakes, too. I said that I didn’t believe it, even though I saw it, because we all know it doesn’t really snow in Georgia.

2. I’m heading to Mountain View for 3 weeks starting Monday. I’ve done like zero planning, so I’m really feeling the pressure of getting all my ducks in a row and being ready to leave for an extended period of time. I’ve got real laundry and a laundry list of things I need to get done, errands I need to run, most of which probably should get done Saturday, since things like the post office and the bank may or may not be open for business for some portion of the day.

3. It is a sad day, because one of the three bamboo shoots from the lucky bamboo Cole and Rachel gave me when I left College Station has more or less died. Much of it is partially black and feeling on it now, it has no strength or substance to it. Hopefully the other two shoots will survive, except I put it outside to maybe perk up its spirits, but then there was a cold spell (see #1) and might have affected the remaining two. I pulled it in, so hopefully no harm done.

4. I didn’t really think that leaving for three weeks would be that big of a deal. In the big scheme of things, it’s not really that long, and it’ll be done before you know it. In true Thomas fashion, I didn’t really spread it around work that I was going, so most people didn’t know, as I just told the people I mostly work with, so they were aware of it. So there was a small group of guys who were all nice enough to say that they were going to miss me. I really wasn’t expecting it. I guess I mean more to them than I thought. And, having them express to me the fact that I would be missed make me start to consider maybe that I would miss them, too. I don’t really like goodbyes. I’m more of an “au revoir/’til we meet again” sort of person. So, now I’m in a mood of not wanting to leave and have this lingering feeling of trying to postpone the inevitable as long as possible. But, I think it has made me realize that I have made better friendships than I thought, which is both a blessing and a curse. I thought that it wouldn’t be a struggle to leave Atlanta to go back to Texas or wherever comes next, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps I’ve made more roots here than I thought, and I don’t look forward to any time when I would have to say goodbye to these guys for real. As most people reading this should know, loving the people at Wesley for so many years makes it extra especially hard to leave, and I have no desire to repeat that heart breaking experience.

5. Wedding dresses. Ok, now I have no earthly idea why I’m revisiting this. I blame this picture (and to a lesser extent Roman Holiday). I still hold that I don’t like strapless dresses that much. I think it has to do with the combination of a whole lot of skin, up-hairdoos, and little around the neck. I’ve half come to the conclusion that I simply don’t like that combination. I have no idea why. Nor do I understand why I even have what I would consider to be such a well formed opinion on the subject… I do however, seem to like the off the shoulder dresses with large and tight necklaces and up-hairdoos. Again, I don’t quite understand me on this, so it probably doesn’t reason much to ask me why.

6. Since I started announcing to people that I would be gone, I have found out that there will be other people filtering out during my stay, so it will feel a little more like home than I was expecting, which is definitely a good thing.

Pwned! Yes, Marc, I came up with the idea quite some time ago that I should pull this April Fool’s joke, and I came very close to just posting an entry saying that I was going to do it, instead of actually doing it (Unfinished Post #355). But, I thought, what the hey, maybe I’ll fish around for some gullible people. Well, looks like it worked! Yay!

So, in other real news besides the haircut and my fake engagement (still single ladies), my parents were here for a week between the 21st and the 28th. About the only thing that we did was go to see the CNN Center and go on the tour. International TV studios are cool. :) We walked around Centennial Park. I’ll probably post the one pic I took eventually.

In the world of movies, I’ve seen 300, Wild Hogs, North By Northwest, 21 Grams, Reign Over Me, and last night, Blades of Glory. 300 was good, but not as good as all the hype said. Wild Hogs was much better than expected. North By Northwest was eh. 21 Grams was exactly like Crash and that other movie that I went to see after Children of Men that I liked so much better but can’t remember the name of right now. I guess since I’ve seen more than two of those type of films, that they aren’t really that enjoyable now. I could see why nobody else like that third movie if they’d already seen the other two. To quote Drewby, “I liked it better the first time when it was called Fight Club”. Reign Over Me was good. And Blades of Glory… um, I think it could have been better. Maybe it was because I watched it in a practically empty theater. Maybe more people laughing would have helped it.

On Wednesday (the 28th), I finally received the final packages for my new file server. I got it put together and up and running that night. I had a total of 5 400 GB drives, but one of them was currently in use and completely full, I needed to make a backup before I pulled it out of its current home and put it into its permanent home. I dusted off the ol’ fibre channel and used it. Now I realize how abysmally slow it is (read/writes in the 5 MB/s range while transferring 400GB takes a while). I managed to get my data off, physically transfer the drive, and get the new array up and running. I started to transfer everything back, which took an equally excrutiatingly long time. We were having a lan party at work, so I wanted it to be ready in time enough to show it off. I didn’t get everything transfered that I would have liked, but enough that I packed it up and took it to the lan. I don’t think anybody got any content off it, so that was pretty disappointing. When a couple of guys tried, it kept crashing explorer. I don’t know if it was just Solaris running Samba, or if it was just my Samba config. As I didn’t really tweak much in the Samba config, I would lean towards a misconfiguration issue and incompatibility playing nicely with XP. If I had a copy of XP, I would test for sure. I might try a VM copy, if I can get it to work… After all that was done, I’ve spent the rest of the weekend playing with it more. I’d make some poor choices of naming things, so there were those mistakes to correct. Then I transfered all of my home directory over to it. I had pretty much run out of space there as well. Once that was done, I transfered argento over to ldap/kerberos/autofs and cut argento over. It’s been pretty smooth sailing so far, I must say, working off of nfs. I’m starting to jones for a gig switch and a telco rack. I setup snapshotting as well on it all, which was one of the primary motivating factors of going with a Solaris/ZFS solution. And, I added some new entries to ldap to get some further automount entries besides home. Automounting stuff from LDAP is awesome. While playing with the array, I had been noticing a slightly ominous, yet faint clicking sound emanating from one of the drives. I installed SMART tools, and finally got the syntax right only to see this on one of the drives: HARDWARE IMPENDING FAILURE GENERAL HARD DRIVE FAILURE [asc=5d, ascq=10]. Doh! Looks like I’ll have to RMA one all too quickly. At least I still have the nice box and packaging Seagate sent the last drive in, so it shouldn’t be hard at all to package it up properly.

And finally, I’ve frozen my a/c again. :( With the fibre channel and all of my machines going over those several days, the apartment got pretty hot (cite my away message “i don’t think my apt can adequately cool the current level of heat i am generating… :(“). So, I figured it was just all of the drives spun up, working hard, and generating too much heat. But, Friday night, it was cool enough that I turned off the a/c and opened some windows for a while. That’s when I heard it, the ominous dripping coming from the HVAC closet. I took off the grate with my trusty cordless drill (thanks Clay and KB), and confirmed what was going on. I called the office Saturday morning and put in a work order. Later when I dropped off rent, the lady at the office said that she would have maintenance call me to confirm that it was a trivial condensation leak. They never called. Chalk up one more for “The Runaround”. Maintenance finally knocked on my door at 8:15 this morning. He confirmed that it was frozen, turned it off, and is letting it thaw right now. Hopefully all it needs is a little freon top-off. But it is worrisome that they topped it off not too long ago. Either I’m doing something that I’m not supposed to do, or there’s a leak…

Anyway, so I was up early and started writing to catch everyone up. I made sure to take a shower before the dude got back and tried to finish this post up before work. And now I’m done, and I still have gobs of time before work… bah!

I’m engaged! Details to follow…

So I finally decided to get a haircut today. I left the apartment a little after 5pm and went to a place I’d been to before, and had a decent experience. I arrived around 5:10, walked in and spoke with the lady behind the register that I wanted a haircut. She said that it would be at least 45 minutes. I asked if I could leave and come back. She said that would be fine. She asked me my name and said that she would put me in the computer. I leave. Fast forward 45 minutes. I come back. The ladies there now don’t know anything about me coming in 45 minutes ago. She checks the computer, I’m not in there. They say that it’s first come, first served. I get the feeling they think I’m lying. They say it will be at least 20 minutes. I say I’ll wait. I sit down and start napping. 1 hour later I finally sit down in a chair. By this time it’s 6:45. They close at 7. I take off my glasses, I explain what I want. Layered haircut, off the ears, blocked in the back. I explain, yes, it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a haircut. It’s parted on the left right now, but please part it in the middle for the cut. She said that she would use shears, then scissors, and shampoo. Only later will I realize exactly what she’s talking about. At this stage in the game, I don’t give a flying fck, so I agree to whatever she says. I should have specified that I wanted scissors, but it’s really late, I’ve been here a really long time, and I don’t want to piss her off. I sit in the chair patiently as she dilly-dallies around. I close my eyes and don’t look once at the mirror. I’m not too familiar with the number system associated with shears. I know 0 is the closest, but I haven’t had shear haircuts enough to know exactly how short it cuts. She doesn’t ask me what number I want, she just goes to town. I’m pretty sure I pretty much have a 0 all the way around my head. The sides, the back, 0. Maybe a 1. Either way it’s way too short. And as for the top, I don’t think she cut any of the hair off. As I type, I can see this one lone hair that hangs down past my nose. What was the point of getting it cut if it’s not short enough to stop doing its stupid curl? So, she’s finally done at 7:30. It took her 45 minutes to give me what I am (at the moment) calling my worst haircut ever. The standard cost is $13. For reasons passing understanding, I tip her $2 for my worst haircut. Well, I didn’t realize exactly how bad off I was until I got home and tried to part it. When I tried to part it, and I couldn’t tell that the top was any shorter, I could have killed someone.

I will have to get it cut again. Fuck.
/me not a happy camper

When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to reclined on the earth, but was separated from the road by a thick antipathy of her brother; the similarity of their dispositions made and she heard it muttering to itself The Duchess. The Duchess.

There was even more than this, but I’ll leave you wanting.

I have not had a good fortune in quite some time, but my Onion horoscope doesn’t disappoint today:

You’ll find solace this week in the arms of an old friend — arms you’ll pin down using a combination of brute force and the unflinching desperation that comes from a lifetime of loneliness.

I just got done watching the 3 hour Battlestar Galactica pilot. All I can say is wow. I think I’ve found a new television series to obsess over. I think the greater question here is why have I waited this long. I’ve done that with several series now, including but probably not limited to “Lost”, “Firefly”, and “Scrubs” (Scrubs to a somewhat less extent). I would hope that it’s because there really is a lot of bad tv out there that people will watch for a while and will recommend to their friends (and that my tv show taste is better than everyone else’s :) ).

Alas, I probably should be tagging my posts and create a tv category for posts…

The weather has been nice enough the past two days that I’ve gone riding in the afternoon. Yesterday, some dude in a car as it was passing yelled out to me, “Hey, Lance, get off the road!”. Odd.

I have been worrying somewhat about the root partition of the new server I’ve been working on for Wesley. It started out as ~250MB, which is fine, but if you have a couple of kernels installed, /lib/modules start eats up the space quickly. So today, I set out to alleviate the space problem. All of the partitions, except for boot, are on LVM. So it was simply a matter of resizing. The partitions are all ext3 for penultimate safety reasons. Since I tried once to shrink /home and failed, I just removed the logical volume, increased the root partition and resized the filesystem. It was easier than I ever imagined. Like three commands and it was done. I could simply remove /home because there as almost no data on it, so I just backed it up and restored it. The hardest part of the whole process was waiting on the ext3 format of a 218GB drive (it’s rather slow and the format itself uses up 188MB, but that’s for another post/rant). Chalk one up for a good decision to endure the extra overhead of LVM.

In other technological news, I installed Sun’s java instead of the crappy gcj on the box that runs my Azureus now. It had been flaky as of late, going for a while and then dying. I didn’t even realize it was using the gnu java, so I installed and hopefully it’ll be happier now.

I was going to rant about OpenID and how I don’t get it and how it’s the latest meme and the fashionable fad. And I was going to cite this’s guys post. But then he reneged on his stance and wrote this. There remains something that I don’t like about it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I also finally watched “The Da Vinci Code” this afternoon. I had put it off forever, but after I heard a roundabout endorsement as a good movie, I decided to watch it. As a whole, I’d say that it was better than I expected. Even given the risque content, I can’t deny that the story really was decent.

I went to Wal-Mart this afternoon to buy one thing, a bathmat. I got it. I hate it. It’s too dark for the floor. It calls too much attention to itself…

You should already know that I saw “Children of Men”. I didn’t get it. I didn’t like it. Why have people called it the best movie since sliced bread? Someone please illuminate me!

Today’s mail consisted of bills and credit card applications. Both are quite ordinary, save one credit card application that was forwarded to me from Texas. Yes, my Mother took the time to put the “Validation required within 7 days”, Bank of America, unopened credit card application into a new envelope and forward it via snail mail to me in Georgia. And no, I’ve never held a BoA account at that address. From the looks of it upon opening, they got my info from the Association…

I don’t know how your brain works, but I’m often curious about mine. I have been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do when I grow up. And it bothers me some that I haven’t figured it out yet, and it bothers me even more that I don’t feel like I’ve really crossed anything out either. I don’t think that I want to be a manager, and I don’t think that I want to be a project manager, but how can I know for sure without going down a long road of actually being or half being one of those things for some period of time to know for sure? I dunno. But, back to brains. I consider myself to be a pretty logical person. I like logic, and logic likes me. But there is this general field call logicstics. And, I’m pretty sure that I don’t like logistics and logistics doesn’t like me. But why would that be. If I’m logical and it’s logical, shouldn’t we get along? I assume that there’s just something about it that my brain doesn’t naturally gravitate toward. Perhaps any psyche majors reading can chime in… I recall even during middle school, having issues with these sorts of problems. I was in GT (Gifted and Talented — yes I’m a dork) during middle school. And I distinctly remember the teacher (Mrs. Pelfrey(sp)), giving us these certain tests. They went something like, five people live in a five story apartment complex. No two people live on the same floor. Each tenant owns a pet. Et cetera, et cetera. (example). I never “got” those puzzles, even today, I despise them. Which I assume the same disdain I have towards those puzzles is the same disdain I have for the “if I move X, that frees up space S₁. If I need to free up S₂ to accommodate constraint C, Y must be moved before X, blah, blah, blah”. I just don’t care about those types of problems. To me, there’s no fun in them. My brain just doesn’t gravitate towards them. Maybe I just see them as mundane, without adventure, and a lackluster creative problem solving outlet.

A better list there never was.

While the ski trip overall was very good, i.e. the skiing was good and the partying was good, I seemed to have caught some sort of illness. I woke up this morning feeling a little nauseous, but didn’t think too much about it. Later I realized the my throat was getting more and more sore, and that I was getting progressively more and more nauseous. So, I finally realized I was in the process of getting sick. My throat is sore and feels all scratchy. I have a small, dry cough mostly, with the occasional real cough. I’ve been loosening mucus in my throat all day when I clear my throat, which is the cause of me feeling pretty much horrible the entire day. I’ve napped a bunch during the day’s travel, so that I think has helped some, as after the flight, I didn’t feel quite as bad as when I began the flight (I pretty much slept all the way from Boston to Atlanta). So, I will definitely be sleeping a bunch over the weekend, taking copious drugs, and drinking lots of water (I’m nursing a Nalgene at the moment). We’ll see how it goes…

I placed an order for 2 of these just now. With shipping my total was ~$40. Did I pay too much? I know it’s eclectic and all, and since it’s from the UK, I doubt I’ll run into someone else who has them, but paying for shipping them across the pond is a little much. I effectively used some b-day money, so it’s not like it was simple out of pocket money, but money given with the expressed purpose of being used to buy something I normally wouldn’t, which this easily falls into the category of. I guess that between this and my Fry’s run yesterday, I don’t want to lull myself into a buying spree.

The Fry’s buying spree was a new server for Wesley. They’ve been having some problems with it as of late, and have an itch to replace and consolidate, so I’m scratching it for them. I think I might have overbought: 1 gb corsair ddr2, athlon 64 x2 3800+, black antec case w/ 450w ps, dual 250gb maxtors, ecs gforce6 mobo with gig nic, pci-e, and onboard video, pioneer dvd burner. As Cole said, “yeah, it might get kind of bored just routing packets”. Dual core, yeah, I think so. I’m pretty sure that it will be the most powerful computer at Wesley, but will be doing the least amount of real work. I bought some more dual port intel nics on ebay, so after the ski trip, I should have those. I’ll put them in, take a few days to install and configure, and then ship it off to them to physically install.

That’s right, a ski trip. Going with the company. Taking a few days off will be nice. :)

I’ve had two very strong memories surface over the past couple of days. During some internal monologue ramblings, I was taken back to the first few days of our family owning Baxter, and how each one of us kids took a night soothing the beast, as he was crying at night. The other was one night, Dr. Moore brought over to our house some copies of scales for the Tuba. I remembered this because I was watching Wordplay, and remembering romantically how I wished I still played regularly and was good, how practicing the fundamentals sucks, and that scales are part of those fundamentals, hence the memory. I was still pretty young and didn’t know him all that well, so it was a little nerve racking to have him do me a favor. I don’t even remember how it came to be that he was going to bring them over to us. Maybe it was right after I switched to Tuba or something. I honestly don’t recall.

Today I got a bunch of errands run. I paid rent, finally deposited some checks, paid a bill, went to Kroger to pick up a few things (crap, they’re still in the car…), and have caught up on laundry. Yay for checking things off a list! Unfortunately all of the Bank of America ATM’s were out of whack. Bummer. I still need to sign my lease renewal and fill out the rebate forms from the computer parts… I probably should do that now…

I’ve felt of late that over the weekend I tend to post several short, disjointed posts, so I figured I’d save up and just post once this time.

Hilary and Barack and who knows who else have formed presidential exploratory committees.

“You pick the smartest, most capable, most honorable individual you can think of…”
— Leo McGarry

I think that sentiment will be driving my decision. A person who is honorable, trustworthy, dare I say patriotic, who would adhere to a more strict interpretation of the Constitution. Actually, I don’t think I can use patriot as a criteria. It has been twisted. I don’t mean it in its current connotation, but that connotation from the Colonial era. A statesman, a patriot, a federalist, a contitutionalist.

I finally just put 2 and 2 together. For the past day or so, I’ve noticed a severe slowness in the responsiveness of one of my shells in a screen session. I had also noticed in a “ps axf” that there was an ssh session open to wesley. Neither of these things were adding up. I just realized that most likely I had ssh’ed to wesley, then back again to argento. The reason for the slowness wasn’t due to high load or low memory, but simply network lag and overhead of going to Texas and back again. Oops…

I have spent a good deal of this weekend again working on the home network. I installed a new Xen image for my database machine, figured out that Samba can’t do straight Kerberos authentication (only with real AD :(), packaged Resin for Debian for real this time (yay! finally!), watched a bunch of Scrubs, watched a bunch of movies over again, got Azureus working headless on my new shell server (compute0), did some laundry, stayed up too late, got up too late, found out my internet connection can push 15Mbps+, setup cricket for snmp monitoring of all of my new machines, hmmm, that’s all I can think of right now…

I haven’t fixed the car door and it’s been too cold to ride or finish the table.

I’m out of photos now. Must take more.

I don’t remember if I’ve blogged about this before, and I’m too lazy to do a search, so I’m just going to post (possibly) again. It sucks that I’m caught up with all of my shows. No more West Wing or Sports Night and I’m caught up on Lost, Studio 60, and Scrubs. Having to wait a week is a chore, and then if you watch them on real TV, there are commercials. What’s up with that? Commercials and waiting for next week’s show is for the birds…

There were three major things I should have gotten done this weekend. 1) Get my car door handle fixed. 2) Ride. 3) Finish my coffee table. I did none of them. Well, I did ride on Sunday, but I should have ridden on Saturday and Monday too…

The other thing I forgot to mention was that a dear friend, Dr. Dudley Moore, died January 13, 2007. Most of my readers wouldn’t know him, but I know there should be at least one or two that did. His health had been declining for some time, having pneumonia and confusion/dimentia. He had been in the hospital for a while and wasn’t getting any better. On January 11, they transfered him to hospice and died two days later. I distanced myself from his worsening health and told myself that he had led a full life. It didn’t really hit me until he was gone that I would miss him. We stopped by to see him the Thanksgiving before last at the Clarks’ house, a couple of streets over from my parents. That will be my last memory of him, in decent health, and I am sort of glad I never saw him in poor health. I am sorry I won’t be able to attend the funeral; my father is one of the honorary pallbearers. I know Dr. Moore impacted many people in his life, and it really will be a shame to miss the funeral, as I know it’ll be big and I know it’ll be a party, just like he’d want it to be.

There were several things that I wanted to mention… what were they…

There was something about venting, about how it’s just a bandaid for your feelings and the problem. When you’ve blown everything out of proportion, I suppose it can help you get a reality check. And if you’re having some issues figuring out how to solve some set of problems, then maybe it’s good for getting a second opinion. But for me, most of my problems don’t involve not knowing the course of action, but rather a lack of motivation to put that course of action into motion. But, I think I’m over it for the moment…

I spent a lot of time remote diagnosing/troubleshooting the Wesley network with Ben tonight. During that time, I could hear people in the background carrying on. Wow, I miss those times a lot… :( Thinking about it now, I realize how much I miss just sitting around for hours on end spending time with your closest friends, day after glorious day. Something that I did for I don’t know how many years straight, I almost never do nowadays. I guess I took it for granted then, and only today did I realize that I missed it. Oh to sit on a germ infested Wesley couch for 8 hours straight, with very little to care about except whether to eat Jin’s or Freebirds.

I am very tired, so I don’t know why I’m posting this.

My living room is an obstacle course/minefield from my new coffee table, old coffee table (aka my microwave box), and a plethora of boxes of stuff I’ve gotten in the mail in the recent past.

This kernel package I made’s name is entirely too long: linux-image-2.6.18.011207-l7_2.6.18.011207-l7-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

I don’t think that sentence makes sense.

I am now the new, proud owner of my very own, real coffee table. It was finally dropped off today and I put it together when I got home. I think I’ve already got a little grease/vegetable oil on it, so I can’t eat on it again until it’s finished. :(

Steve Jobs had his keynote today at MacWorld. I’m have two questions about AppleTV. One, why doesn’t it have a firewire port so it can stream TV from a cable box, and two, does it support UPNP? They also announced the iPhone. It looks cool, but I’m not one much for that kind of stuff. I still have really old, plain cell phones, and I still don’t have much need for an iPod…

I wore my Greece shirt to work today. Only one guy noticed and mentioned something to me about it. That tells you something about the guys I work with. Or maybe they’re all afraid of me. Or maybe they noticed and didn’t say anything.

I’ve finally gone through my photos from the past several months and the photoblog will be on autopilot for the next (almost) 2 weeks, just as Marc’s is at the moment. Hopefully I’ll get around to posting the raw pics into original soon.

I heard a song on Scrubs during my binge that caught my attention from Kutless. I downloaded some songs and they seem like a cool band.

I bought 4 2-port 10/100 e100s on ebay (a buy it now) for $30. I probably would have spent $20 on one single port from best buy or fry’s. I need them for a router, so I can finish building the home network (I need real dns before I can setup kerberos…). Also on the tech front, I realized that even though my webhost symlinks uptime to /bin/true, I can still read /proc/loadavg (and top will show it as well). But the bad part about this is that I’ve seen the load be 30. Now I understand why it’s unbearably sluggish sometimes. :( This is almost unacceptable and I’m half inclined to setup a cron job to monitor it to see what it’s like over time…

I’ve also solved a problem with my Nexenta system that’s been driving me up the wall. I had gotten Nexenta to work with OpenLDAP, but it wasn’t seeing the groups. I finally posted to sparks-discuss and they solved it for me pretty quickly. It was a known bug, but they had a decent work around, so I was pretty happy with the result.

Maybe it’s been the up-teen hours of Scrubs that I’ve watched over the past several weeks, but tonight I am feeling mysteriously better about my life. I just finished catching up, having watched all of the Scrubs episodes through the current season and episode. Like most television shows, at the end of their 30 minutes, whatever mystery or problem plaguing the characters seems to find resolution. And you might not think that life is really like that…

There are many days that I feel completely overwhelmed in my life. And there aren’t too many people in this world that I talk to about stuff like that, and it seems like that pool grows smaller and smaller every day. I get tired of talking about the mundane details of my life, and I’ve never been one much for small talk, so that does not lend itself very well to me keeping up with some of my best friends.

But somehow at the end of every episode, things are all right. And, you know what kind of show it is, so there isn’t truly much doubt that things will turn out okay, even when things look their most bleak. And somehow it’s the same way with my life. There hasn’t been a day gone by in years when I honestly didn’t know in my heart of hearts that my future is secure. But there are too many days when I can’t for the life of me see my next step, and too many days where I can’t imagine a wife and a family, and too many days when I feel like I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing. And knowing that my life is going according to plan does not always grant me solace.

But there are times, when I briefly glimpse clarity, and know that we really are going to be alright.

I just wish someone could tell me what I’m supposed to be doing here. And I wish I had someone to go through life with me and help me get through all of those little things that I need nudges to do. And I wish I had someone to vent to and someone I can listen to. Someone whose life I have a vested interest in.

It’s just so hard for me to know that in the end everything will be alright when I can’t see my next step.

Note: I should have posted this yesteday (Saturday), but I didn’t. :(

Today has been monumental. I rode again today. Here are the stats from the ride near my apartment: 6.1 miles, 27 minutes, 13.6 mph average, and a top speed of 34.87 mph. Yah! And I didn’t really feel that bad afterwards. I think I’ve finally realized that I need to pace my riding. I didn’t try to sustain 20 mph, and just tried to keep it between 10 and 15 mph, which seems to work out much better for me and should be a better work out for me. Longer time at an elevated heart-rate and all that. I also vacuumed the living room. Go me!

Venting is extremely foreign to me. You feel upset and overwhelmed. You angrily spout out a bunch of stuff that may or may not be relevant, meaningful. or pertinent to anything. And generally at the end you feel better or maybe after a little while, you feel better. Even though nothing has fundamentally changed with anything that’s going on in your life or whatever’s been bothering you. And it’s even worse when you feel bad for no good reason, then vent for no good reason, then feel better for no good reason. The problems still exist, remain unresolved, and no solutions created, yet you just feel differently about them now. That just doesn’t compute. Which is why it seems such a foreign concept to me. Perhaps because I view it more as a problem solving strategy, when in fact it is not. And the reason I view it as a problem solving strategy is because everyone and their dog wants you to talk stuff out whenever you feel like this, like it will solve all of those problems that have led to this. It solves the problem of how you feel, but little else. But is that really a solution at all? Can feelings really be solved? Of course not! They are “just feelings”. But it’s not like they can be ignored (well, I bet I do a more than fair job at that…). They must be dealt with somehow. But why? I guess it’s a little too much like cleaning to me. Yeah, I could clean this stuff, but in a day or a week, it will be dirty again. And, in all honesty, I’d rather just leave it dirty for a long time than have to clean it up once a week. There is no satisfaction cleaning it up once a week. (Well, there is little satisfaction in cleaning at all for me.) But, it gets the monkey off my back. So, it’s like, if you feel bad for no good reason, then why deal with it, because eventually you’ll feel better for no good reason. Shouldn’t it just balance itself out? Seriously, what’s up with feeling bad for no good reason? Why does that happen? Anyway, doesn’t that make sense? If you feel bad for no good reason, and you wait long enough, shouldn’t you feel better for no good reason? Why am I trying to justify this to myself? I dunno, but I need to go to bed.

So, instead of trying to “solve” your “feelings”, wouldn’t it be more advantageous to actually fix the problem instead of fixing the feelings associated with the problem? Where by fixing the problem, ergo, vis à vie, ipso facto, e pluribus unum, you fix the feeling.

I awoke this morning to knocking at my door. In my i’m-still-asleep stupor, I was excited, as I thought that it might be my new coffee table (oh yeah, I finally got the coffee table). I put on my robe (j/k I don’t own a robe) and answered the door. It was the police. Luckily I had [insert something here that would have been fortuitous in light of a cop showing up on my doorstep] the night before. He asked if I owned the Yukon (which I do of course). Someone had tried to break into it. They managed to crack the handle, but didn’t get into the car. They might have gotten spooked or something (who knows). Anyway, the car’s ok. I’ll need to get some estimates of getting it fixed, and most likely I won’t claim it on the insurance, so it’ll probably be out of pocket (yay!). I took some pictures of the damage this morning, so I’ll probably eventually post them.

In other news, I caught up on Lost on Friday night. I had finished season two some months ago and hadn’t been keeping up with season three. They were in a lull, so I picked up the first 6 episodes (that’s how many they’ve made thus far), and I’ll poke my head back under the sand for a few more months. I really do like watching them in groups (like I’ve done with West Wing and Scrubs), as it’s just so nice. I think that I’ve made some peace with Lost’s slow timeline. I’ve also decided if I were any of them, I would have snapped, and not trusted anybody, and just started killing anyone who messed with me. I really don’t understand what the others are afraid of from these people who crash landed. If they’re so sure of their purpose and their success, then they shouldn’t care about them. If their purpose is so pure, they should have no problems letting new people in and have those new people help them. It just seems like a cult or something. They have to hide and ethically justify what they’re doing for the greater good. It just doesn’t make much sense. But, if the story is supposed to last for 5 seasons, then it should be getting close to half way, which is somewhat of a comfort… like it’s only downhill from here or something.

I also’ve watched “You, Me, and Dupree” which was better than expected. Also, I finally watched “Funny Face”. I didn’t realize it was so much of a musical. Oh well, it was still decent. Having Fred Astaire in it should have tipped me off.

Do you know the best part of my first ride on the first day of the new year was, beside the 55 degree cold, the wind, driving 10 miles for a 5.6 mile ride, and accidentally riding past where I parked, adding an additional mile to the ride? The mid-ride dry heaves. Thanks, 2007. It’s going to be a good year.

When people ask me how long I’ve been here or how long I’ve been in Atlanta, I’ve started telling them that it will be two years in April. I guess that it’s been roughly 20 months now, but I like the other turn of phrase more so and 20 months doesn’t really mean much to me in terms of time. But every time I say that now and think about really how long it’s been, I cannot help but feel like it’s been two years of my life where I’ve accomplished nothing. I will be two years older. I was a young 24 when I started, and I am about to turn 26. That makes me feel old. I’m almost 26. No wife, no kids, no real sense of where I’m going, nor any sense of self accomplishment. Life’s not supposed to feel like this.

Clawing your way up the corporate ladder 101.
How to tell when your boss is an ass 102.
Ass kissing 201.
Selling yourself (and taking credit for other’s work) 202.
How to create a project for the sake of creating a project and sustain it for 6 months 301.
How to tell when to leave your job 401.
Looking for another job while still employed 402.

Unfortunately all of those sound like every self-help book ever written. I doubt they would actually teach you anything worthwhile, sustainable, or applicable to people’s real lives.

I guess that I have a post backlog. I have all of these disjointed thoughts that I feel warrant separate posts, but they’re all grouped together time-wise at the end of the Christmas holiday. So, if you’re reading this, be sure that you didn’t miss any new posts. :)

Oh, and I’ve been pondering going on the January Work Project. It looks like it starts Jan 6. It would be cool to take off for a week and jetset out, but thinking now, it’s a little short notice…

You can find for the time being all of my photos at http://chobas.com/original/. Hopefully it doesn’t become a crutch and result in lest posting on the photoblog…

I have more than a few artsy friends in the graphics/photography/video/animation field. Several have been in the real world for a few years, while others are just starting. It really makes me wish that we could all start a little consulting business. There are at the very least Amy, Tycen, Adan, Marc, and Nancy. They could all do the artsy thing, and I could do all the tech support/IT for them…

Wow, I’ve not had that much fun in months. I really wasn’t looking forward to it at all. I was in fact dreading it and had been for several days. I’ve been in the doldrums as of late, so I wasn’t in the mood to be social, but damn I had a good time. I’m not sure I’ve ever had so much fun at the expense of drunk people, and boy are they funny. At the beginning I was pretty stiff, still not really wanting to be there, but after a little while I started to loosen up, for whatever reason. It probably had to do with the fact that everybody was drunk and wasn’t going to remember this, ever. I also started not caring whether people cared if I was taking pictures of them, so I started to take a whole bunch of pictures. I ran down my battery, let it charge some, ran it down again, let it charge some, and then ran it down again. I’m beginning to think I need a pistol grip battery along with some new glass. Looking at the pictures now, it seems like my primary issues were focus, lighting, and framing. I became more and more aware of being too close to the people in the picture, so I would back away and let the flash travel a bit (if I had the space to take a step back). The place was pretty dark, so I was using a flash, and wasn’t really in the mood to try any manual aperture mode. I figured that the reason why the camera was intent on pre-flashing alot was due to the low light and not being able to autofocus, which I also imagine didn’t help the battery situation much. Since I was blinding a bunch of people and didn’t have much battery to spare, I didn’t really feel like making them sit through several takes. And finally since it was also dark, I had some trouble seeing what I was photographing through the viewfinder. So, to recap, I need to pay more attention to framing (I was just being lazy mostly when this happened), bring a better battery, take at least 2+ of everything (to aid in better odds of a good autofocus), while simultaneously getting better at paying attention to the focus before taking the picture and being more diligent about checking the proof. I guess that part of it was that sometimes it just didn’t want to take, so I would hold down the button so that it eventually would take (which could have been a bunch of them). By then I didn’t have too much control over what exactly was in focus and didn’t want people to have to pose any longer.

In other news, I am in serious want of a wife…

I am a seeker in search of miracles.
For ceiling’s and wall’s.
The conditionally perceived illusionary surroundings require examination and overcoming.
His exaggerated approach to sci-fi and surrealist subjects are fresh and twisted, with commentaries, accomplishments, and future goals as well.

I have only until recently gained a significant appreciation for Scrubs. I essentially watched the first two seasons this past weekend, and I now understand why Adan, et. al. liked it so much, and I now like it, too. :) I really need to procure and watch the rest, which I imagine I’ll get on it right quick-like.

For everyone who understand the difference between a dollar and a penny and can do dimensional analysis, you MUST WATCH THIS ROTF LMAO LOLOLO!!1!!!1. If the math is too much for you to follow, just use Google Calculator.

Update: For those of you who would like to keep up with the saga, check in over at the blog this guy set up for this.

I really hate being ignored. The frequency with which I feel this is quite small, but potent when it does occur (hence this post). And indeed more often than not, I am quite content to be ignored. But there are those times, when someone asks something of you and asks that it be done in an expeditious manner and then promptly ignores you, like it’s not really all that important (of course I never do that myself…). Those are the times that irk me the most. I’d like to believe that I’m a pretty low maintenance guy and that my friends don’t have to dote over me nor pay me much attention. Hopefully they acknowledge my existence, which usually of itself is enough. So, please, if you ask something of me, and I follow up with some sort of quandary in response to your request, be quick to respond, lest I think you don’t care that much for what you asked. Man, I just hate it when I ask a simple and reasonable question and get no love… I really hope I don’t do that.

I am waiting for a few more minutes here in the Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport with free wifi and figured that I might share some thoughts while still fresh. I was glad to be home and out of Atlanta, but I am also now glad to be heading back to Atlanta. I can only take so much of the “what do you want to eat”, “where do you want to eat”, “did you get enough to eat”, “do you have everything (luggage, camera, tickets)”, etc. I feel pretty hen pecked when they take my temperature on virtually everything. I know that they’re just trying to make my trip as wonderful as possible by making sure that they’re doing what I want to be doing, but in reality I don’t really care that much and am pretty low maintenance (or at least I like to think so) and so I would almost just rather prefer that someone else picked and I will be content with whatever decision is made. I think that my Dad is getting sappy in his old age. I would guess that my Mother is the same way, but knows to hide it a little more from me and to try and not be so Motherly (which I assume that she learned from the empty nest phase during the first few years of me being in college and some talks that we had). I guess they will always be parental, but for theirs and my sakes I wish they’d worry a lot less. It’s surprising that neither one of them has gotten ulcers… Somehow we managed to not see any movies nor did we talk about Baxter. I suppose that I was party to both counts, it seemed a little odd, especially that Baxter never came up. He’s buried in the back yard, so I went to see him twice and took some pictures. I thought that I would feel differently seeing the grave, but I guess that it’s been long enough that it didn’t really evoke much, which in itself made me a little sad.

I got to see Role and Jackson for most of the day on Friday, which was really good. TJ even stopped by a bit, being in Amarillo. Also, while my sisters and Mother shopped in Hobby Lobby, I wandered around the store and caught up with both Max and Ann Murphey (well she used to be Ann Murphey), both of whom I hadn’t talked to in quite some time, so it was good to catch up. All in all a really good weekend, getting to see the fam and getting to see and catch up with friends.

Apparently I have bad luck when it comes to air travel, as everyone seemed to mention it. My parents and even the neighbor mentioned my trouble. Anyway, it wasn’t something that I had even really thought about until several people brought it to my attention. In my mind, I really didn’t think that I have had too many issues… Odd how perceptions are different. I guess it’s just not one of those things that I think about or linger on. I figure that I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

I better sign off as I imagine that we’ll be boarding soon. Hope everybody had a Happy Thanksgiving!

I flew American Airlines this trip, which I am not sure if I will do again. For the leg from DFW to AMA, they would not issue me a seat assignment until I arrived in DFW. Upon my arrival (and with the skylink broken) I walked to my gate and received a seat assignment and a boarding pass. They announced around the boarding time that they were overweight and needed 4 volunteers to bump. None did and they basically recalled/confiscated my boarding pass. At this point, I’m wondering if I am going to get to Amarillo that night, as the flight that they mentioned during the bumping announcment was at 6am the next morning. But, they must have loosed some weight somewhere, as I think that all of the 4 of us that might have been involuntarily bumped weren’t, so I made it home as planned. A little disappointing, as I was almost in the mood for a tirade about their policy towards their customers. I even had a decent analogy to how it appears to me how baseball game tickets are also a racket, as you are not given re-entry rights. It’s like you aren’t buying/renting out a seat so much as buying a one time ticket through the door.

I read “The Bear and the Dragon” (which is actually Chad’s book) during the flight. I figured that I need the mental exercise in reading instead of sleeping. I got like 130 pages into it, I think.

On the flight from ATL to DFW, I did sit next to a very attractive young lady. I eventually built up enough courage to chit chat with her. I stammered something about whether or not she was flying home for the holiday. To which she replied that she had a wedding to go to this weekend and hence the trip. I tried to continue the conversation, which lasted for a couple of minutes. I figured that I would be polite and only carry it on if she did, which she didn’t, so that was that.

This is not a new sentiment, and I don’t know if I have ever mentioned it here, but some attractive woman is going to have to club me over the head. I can probably read women about as well as they can read me so I really just give up trying. So, like I said, this is not a new revelation, but perhaps worth repeating.

In other news, both my parents made mention of the possibility that I’ve gained some weight. Thinking about it now as I write, I am curious why they didn’t mention it before when they were in Atlanta… But, my Dad got the scale out and it weighed me at just under 200 pounds. It’s a nice feeling when you think that you’re gaining weight and then it is more or less confirmed. I think that I’ve floated around 185 for several years. I’ve had that sinking feeling about my metabolism slowing since I’ve moved to Atlanta, plus the fact that quite often I eat pretty late at night. Two factors that are not contributing to my skinniness. Like all good parents, I think that they were spining it and back pedalling, and I doubt that I could get a straight answer now about what they really thought, even if I asked them point blank. Maybe the bike was a good purchase after all.

Well, it’s rather late, even my my standards and I’m getting up “early” in the morning to head out to Palo Duro Canyon for a little photo shoot with Cole and Rachel. Should be fun.

It seems that it has been quite some time since my last post, a week to be exact, for which I apologize to my noble and illustrious readers. I must be on quite the Jimmy Stewart kick, as I have watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Rear Window”, and “The Philadelphia Story” (which I am currently in the middle of). Both “Rear Window” and “Accepted” were really good, and “The Philadelphia Story” is looking pretty good at this point, too. You should watch the director’s commentary of “Accepted”, as it has virtually nothing to do with the movie that these guys are watching, and more to do with the making fun of each other and generally goofing off. It was a really good time. I watched some Airwolf, MacGuyver, MXC, Get Smart, and MythBusters this weekend. I’m really digging the variety. I continue on to try and catch up on my old movie backlog, which I’m sure will take me quite some time. This little endeavor has, though, gained me quite a whole new appreciation for actresses before my time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Shirley MacLaine, and Audrey Hepburn.

My apartment complex recently had need to shut off the water to the entire complex several times over several days, during business hours. I’d say that this happened roughly 3 to 4 times over a week or so. It definitely took me at least two tries to get through a shower without them cutting off the water half way through. Once or twice I misjudged the time, and once the notice fell off my door, so I was caught completely unaware.

The new cable has been pretty worthless. I watched it for a day or two, and remembered why I didn’t miss it (especially since I don’t get channels like 3-6 on my tv, as it is somewhat decrepit, and counts me out of some of the probably better broadcast programming). Comcast was quite efficient in their billing, as it has already come, which reminds me that I need to expense it.

I somehow managed to get my external into an odd state, where it now has XFS on it, instead of the normal FAT32. I didn’t have enough to rectify this, so I had to break out the good ol’ fibre channel for a bit to get the external back to a state where just about any o/s can read it. I can fill in the mundane details later, for those of you who care. I’ve played with LVM before, but always more in a playful way than in a production way. And I knew that it wasn’t the most intuitive thing in the world, so I had to mess with it some to get it to bow to my will.

Oh, I got a haircut this weekend, as I was going to a wedding on Saturday. The haircut went ok. The sides are a lot shorter than I prefer, and there is some long hair in the front (like everyone seems to leave long with the part not in the middle), but other than that, I can’t complain. The wedding was small, but good. It was the first that it wasn’t a Wesleyite and hence wasn’t a wedding where I felt like I’d known them forever and knew lots of other Wesleyites in attendance as well.

It’s been pretty cold at night here, so I haven’t been riding at all in the mornings. I caught up on some laundry over the weekend. I had a fun adventure both dropping off and picking up my suit from the cleaners. During the drop-off, the Indian lady was trying to ask me a question, which I couldn’t understand at all, and asked her to repeat mabye half a dozen times. I still didn’t understand and finally another employee (that was on the phone at the time) stepped in and said the word “Thursay”, which is what she had been trying to convey to me, that the suit would be ready to pick up on Thursday. Which was fine, of course, but it was definitely a tough time getting through the thick accent communication barrier. Then, when I went to pick it up Friday after paintball (yes, I know get over it), I had an almost even harder time getting it back, as they apparently couldn’t read my hand writing, tought that the G was an E and finally a C to figure out where they had my suit stashed among the racks and racks of clothes. I finally got it back, but question if I would go back there again. They also left some odd oily (or what seem to be oil) marks on my white shirt. I dunno what to think about that, but I’ll have some time before I need more stuff dry cleaned.

This past week I’ve meant to blog about the stuff like the dry cleaners and the water being cut off, but let it slip and they both might have gone by the wayside, but I happened to remember them tonight while I was writing, so you all can partake in my life a little more. I should try to do a little better about shooting off little bloglets when I think of funny things that happen.

Anyway, I am looking forward to getting out of Dodge. I’m getting pretty stir crazy around here…

My hair is too long.
I have new shoes (for a little while now).
I’m getting cable tomorrow.
I want to go snow skiing.
I am one click away from buying a new $300 coffee table that I’ve been lusting after since I don’t know when, but $300 is a lot. That’s like half of a new computer (a really decent one) or 3 400 GB drives (on sale). All things that I really could do with. Why oh why doesn’t money grow on trees?

Why would you condone text-speak abbreviations in official high school exams? It’s lame. And why don’t they just put an extremely heavy weight on spelling? Wouldn’t that be an semi-unbiased way to make sure that the kids know that they should use the appropriate spelling, while simultaneously not punishing the content for the poor spelling?

I was today forwarded to me an email of some propoganda of the American Family Association, stating that Best Buy has banned the use of Merry Christmas in their advertising. Apparently this is an abomination, although it is beyond me as to why. Can anyone tell me why they have a problem with this? Best Buy is an international corportation (albeit a small one, with only US and Canadian stores). Corporations don’t care about you, they only care about their bottom lines and their stock holders (well, supposedly their stock holders). They only pseudo-care about you if they loose you as a customer, so I would imagine that they thought long and hard and chose the decision that would piss off the fewest of their likely customers. Also, I’m not quite sure what exactly their expectations are from this campaign. They want everyone to email Best Buy, but there is no mention of boycott or anything else. Are they just bitching and whining about this? Seriously, what did you expect from a corporation? It’s the American way, the realization of American dream, and capitalism all at work. It would appear that the major reason why this is even brought up is due to several other corporations changing their stance from previous years. Also, it appears that they have a problem with Borat. Are they aware that it was fictional? That jokes make fun of things? That we don’t have to be offended by every little thing? That the “Running of the Jews” really is a funny premise? That it is really funny in the context of the movie while simultaneously really sad that there really are real people in the world that honestly and completely hate certain people-groups. It is honestly sad. But in a make-pretend movie, it’s ok to laugh, honest. :)

Ok, off my soapbox now.

I watched “Stranger than Fiction”, which was really good. I’ve also watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” today, which I accidentally napped through parts of. I went to see Borat a little while ago, which I loved. And I watched “Roman Holiday”, which I seemed to recall loving as well. My Netflix queue is filled with old movies at the moment, including “Mr. Smith…”. I seem to be on a kick to try to whittle down my list of movies I need to watch from the IMDB Top 250. Well, that and I’m still really low on modern movies that I want to watch.

Does anyone else ever feel like no matter how hard they try, that there are a great many things that they cannot will into happening?

REL was in town. I thought about going, and maybe should have, but didn’t.

I whole-heartedly and completely agree that this is gibberish to me as well.

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘I can’t configure Debian’.

I watched “The Break-Up” (which was still good), “Thank You for Smoking” (which was ok), and I’ll be watching “Roman Holiday” sometime today most likely.

I knew it. I didn’t think that I had much of an accent. Now irrefutable internet proof!

Is today the 1st? Is rent due today? I have no idea what day it is. At least this week I know what day of the week it is. It’s been a stressful week and I can feel it in my upper back. Hopefully only one more stressful day (Thursday) this week. :)

That researcher guy got questioned and then his house searched and stuff confiscated, which is unfortunate, because he really did break the law. He should have known better, but the problem has existed for quite a while. I despise it when a company or organization or department feigns something like that. You give the illusion of security or fore-thought or whatever, but in reality you can’t or won’t accept the truth.

This should make a bunch of people very happy.

To catch up on movies as of late, I’ve seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, which I thought was pretty much “The Apartment”, “The Lake House” which was better than I was expecting from Keanu and Sandra, “Blade Runner”, which I still don’t really get, “Match Point”, which was excellent, especially from Woody Allen, “Nacho Libre”, which I should have watched in the theater, because it was really good and would have been better with an audience, “Lost in Translation” which was ok, but seemed more or less like “Code 46”, and “Memoirs of a Geisha”, which was wonderful.

I finally got around to watching the latest episode of Studio 60 last night (episode 6). It was AWESOME! I really feel like the cast and the writers were really gelling, because the dialogue and the acting was spectacular. Multiple mini story lines, character and plot development. Good stuff. Maybe it was each becoming comforable with the other, maybe it was the cast getting used to the tempo and gait of the writing, maybe just the cast getting to know each other better, maybe it was the story progressing to the point where you were no longer having to remind the audience who was whom and could actually move the narrative forward. Whatever it was, it was good, and I’m glad that it looks and feels much more like what I grew accustomed to in Sports Night and the West Wing. I’m much relieved, as I was up until this point not yet convinced as to the quality. If this keeps up, then I’m not worried. :)

I guess that I saw this on Digg, which then linked to this and this. All I considered to be lackluster.

By Handsome Rob’s personal request, I posted a picture of the new bike.

Even though you may not be in CS anymore, you didn’t have to miss this year’s Bonding Sunday!

I have been quite remis in posting both here and in the photoblog. I just went back through what I’ve taken over what seems like the past 6 months and posted them into the photoblog (starting with this one of kb). They’ll show up one a day for quite some time (until the 12th of November). Enjoy!

I’ve had a good day. I got up this morning around eleven, after several sleep/wake cycles. I had set my alarm for eleven, but I guess my body was anxious about not oversleeping, as I woke up several times before then, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I normally would have slept in even more, but there was a group of people from work that wanted to go bike riding on the Silver Comet Trail. I stopped off at work on my way, grabbing a bagel, a banana, and some Gatorade (it’s tough to believe, I know, that I ate a bagel and banana for breakfast). We met up around 12:30 and we finally headed out around 1, I think. The trip was supposed to be fifteen miles, which we surpassed. My computer said that I averaged about 13.9 mph, and our travel time was roughly an hour fifteen. There were some legs where we sustained about 20 mph, and I and another guy drafted off of each other and traded off leading. Afterwards, most of us went to eat lunch at a little sandwich shop. I was and am really surprised at how little sore I am and good I felt at the end. When I’ve ridden this past week, I’ve always felt dead at the end of a 2 or 3 mile jaunt, which hasn’t given me much desire to ride again. I came back home and showered and haven’t done much since.

I’m in the middle of Two Towers, having already watched The Fellowship recently. I should have had my Netflix in today, but they were not in my mailbox when I checked upon my arrival back after lunch, which was disheartening. So, that put somewhat of a damper on the rest of my weekend, as I would have had some new movies to watch. I can’t imagine why they are late, and I don’t know if I should blame Netflix or the post office.

How is it that I just spent $800 on a road bike, yet I don’t want to go riding in the morning? This is why I don’t buy stuff. This is why I don’t talk. This is why I eat the same food. Because when I deviate from the norm I get screwed, and I only wish that I hadn’t.

Long live the status quo.

So, I got a road bike this past Saturday. I ordered it the Saturday before, which in turn meant that they had to order it and put it together, so I picked it up yesterday. I rode yesterday and today, and remembered how much out of shape I am (I also remembered that I am still in mourning over having my Gary Fisher Marlin stolen many, many moons ago). It’s a Trek 1000, and I took some pictures of it, so maybe I’ll post them to the photoblog. I watched “Taxi Driver” and thought that it was ok, and I watched “Puddle Cruiser”, which was ok as well. “Puddle Cruizer” is Broken Lizard’s first feature lenght film on 35mm. I guess that they just released it on DVD, as it was filmed in the mid-90s. The commentary was done pretty recently, as they made several references to “Dukes of Hazzard” in the commentaries. And, btw, they are planning a Super Troopers 2. Here’s to hoping it’s as funny as the first. I am leaning more and more towards augmenting my internet situation. Maybe I’ll make a decision soon… My parents are flying out on October 13, so that should be fun/interesting, which means I need to clean the apartment thoroughly beforehand. I went out with a few guys from work on Friday after work. Went to a bar until around 11. It wasn’t too drunken, so it was enjoyable.

I feel like I’ve really been out of it lately, and I have no idea why. I sort of miss being around people who will correct your smallest grammar mistake or mispoken word. It keeps your mind and tongue on their toes.

This week or last, I also had a guy from work ask me if I was going to church. We were discussing work and how I was down about it, and he asked me sort of out of the blue. This is a guy who I pretty much thought was a pagan, so it really took me aback.

I also finally got to watch the second episode of Studio 60. It was on par with the first. It’s still too early to tell, but I imagine that I will be a watcher…

F-u-c-k u Lost!1!

My mark on Wesley is gone… :(

Is anyone reading this?

Popeyes has the crack biscuits.
Texas Roadhouse has the crack rolls.
Koppe Bridge has the crack french fries.
What else am I missing?

Handsome Rob asked me a good question tonight, “what areas are you aggressive in your life?”. And I really didn’t have a good answer for him, because I’m not really sure that there are any. He did say driving, and I will give him that. I think that I tend to avoid conflict, I try to do what people expect of me, I try to please people, and be generally as agreeable as possible, becuase I figure that’s what most people like best, someone who will go along with you. I’m, of course, speaking in generalities here, but when am I agressive?

It’s been two years since my first blog entry. Not nearly as long as many on the web. It seems like a fairly long time, until I think that I’ve been here for 17 months, which only makes about 6 months worth of blogging while in CS, which doesn’t sound like very long at all. Odd how often time seems both short and long simultaneously…

For your enjoyment, a listing of thoroughly enjoyable, truly screwball comedies (feel free to add others in comments). Hollywood needs to make more of these.
Top Secret!
The Naked Gun
Hot Shots!
Airplane!
Animal House
Young Frankenstein
Loaded Weapon
Robin Hood: Men in Tights

And, a random quote, which seems plausible:

Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they’re much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity.

I procurred a PA-RISC system on Friday. For free! Yeah, baby. Since Debian is awesome and has a port, I’ve been working on it for a good part of the weekend (see documentation here, here, here, and here). It had an old Debian install on it, testing even, but I was not privy to any of the passwords. And, since udev and 2.6 and all, I figured that it would be a good idea to have a nice clean install, instead of a dist-upgraded one. So, instead of doing a simple dist-upgrade on Friday, I’ve been working most of the weekend to get Debian reinstalled on the thing. I wasn’t able to get XFS on it, due to some odd kernel module bug. I posted to the mailing list, but the buggers haven’t answered back. I’m not sure if I would reinstall now, anyway, since it was a pain, and is really slow, and my internet sucks. BTW, it’s a smoking 100MHz RISC chip, an HP 712/100, with 64MB of RAM, a 2G HD, and 10 whole Megabits of network. It’s an HPPA and my first non-x86 architecture, so I’m pretty happy. I don’t know what I’m even going to do with it, but it’s sitting under my feet at the moment… Maybe it’s time to plop down some $$$ for that O2 I’ve always been lusting for…

The closest friends I have made during my time in Atlanta are almost 100% non-Christian and gamers. If you know me very well, you would know that I do not consider myself a gamer (neither in video, nor most real world sports). I have never been very proficient at games, which I am sure helped to contribute to my general disdain for them. And perhaps even more prolific in forming my opinion is the lack of value that I see in them. Not too unlike many of the procrastination tools of the average college student *cough*facebook*couch, gaming doesn’t add much value to my life. Especially when done alone. Seeing if you can beat the undead by using your hero and a whole lot of I don’t know what is an utter waste of time in my opinion. It can be argued that team gaming is a bonding experience, which it is, but gamers game much more than the not-to-oft game night at a friend’s house. I would much rather browse the web, or watch movies, or, gasp, watch tv. At least in TV or the web, I have the opportunity to be able to learn something or keep up with current events. Sure, you could say that there is value in succeeding at gaming, learning how to solve problems, create strategies, and defeat enemies, but as you may recall I suck at games, so it’s a lot of time spent getting my ass handed to me, not getting any better, and feeling really bad about it.

Which semi-brings me to the point of this post. For the most part, I try not to do stuff that I’m no good at. I can be very competitive at times, and it’s not usually something that I like about myself, because it’s not a very loving stance to take to be better than someone, even if you are. So, the way that I think that I’ve developed over my life to deal with this is to not care about a whole lot of stuff like this. Because if I don’t care about it, then I won’t be competitive and when I suck I won’t get down in then mouth about it. It’s a defense mechanism. An odd side effect of this is that I tend to either care immensely about something, or hardly at all. All the things I care about, I care about immensely, and everthing else I can’t care less about. Odd extremes, I know…

So, when all of my friends are gamers, what do they want to do? Game and talk about gaming. Which bores me to no end, but I can listen to them talk, because I’m their friend and I value their friendship, and I want (at some level) to care about what they care about, and show them at the very least the respect to listen to their conversation. But, I tend to draw the line if you “think that I’ll really enjoy this game”, or expect me to want to play games, even after I have repeatedly said that I’m not much of a gamer, and that I don’t play games. I might humor you, but do not confuse humor for genuine interest.

Man, I’m still not to my point yet… So, I have been playing games a lot recently, and am, what I would consider, honest-to-goodness good at one of them, namely Smash Bros. Now, my training was elite in the Man Cave, under the tutilage of Drew, Chad, Rob, et al. They all consitently kicked my ass at Smash Bros. I seem to recall them being able to dominate with their second or third characters. (Or that’s my perception of of how all that played out.) So, in accordance with how I deal with this stuff, I’ll try my best to not care about it, but when your friends care a lot about it, sometimes it’s really hard for you not to care about it. And sometimes impossible.

So, I was sucky then, but for some reason, I can play this one game way better than the guys that I play on a regular basis with. I don’t enjoy playing the for any length because it’s just no fun when it’s a slaughter. It’s not really a game at that point. So this is a boost to the confidence. But, there are other gamers out there who are better than me, and I’ve met a couple here, and I don’t like that very much, so I stop trying to play hard, because I know that I won’t be able to win consistently.

And there are times when an old game gets pulled out, and inevitably, there is a plethora of guys who have spent countless hours playing it. And so, since I’ve basically never played any games ever, and even if I have I don’t really remember any, I get slaughtered. Which definitely isn’t fun for me, and which I assume isn’t fun for them if they continually score on me. So, if I get irate and want everybody to stop checking me into the wall and want you to teach me some and let me learn, is that too much to ask in the middle of a game? And then only to be chastized for wanting to when I show no mercy in Smash Bros…

Am I being unreasonable here? Would I have stopped and taught them? I’d like to think so, and I even did. We were playing Mario Tennis, and I was acing this guy who is an excellent gamer, but hadn’t played Tennis before. Finally, I stopped and gave him some tips of where to stand when recieving the serve. I wasn’t a total saint, because I continued to not give him enough time to get into position, but I needed to win, because winning is all that matters to these guys. I needed to beat his partner, and his partner is so good, that I can only do it by picking on him.

They all portray it such that I am not even allowed to be good at one game, even when I suck royally at the rest. It’s like there’s no mercy or grace or love in these circumstances. In my experience there is this n-th degree of competition that rears its head that isn’t healthy for the relationships. Maybe I’ve been traumatized too much in my life for all of these things to just roll of my back and not be bothered by them and simply enjoy the ass kicking that they enjoy all too much.

And this is why I stopped playing Smash Bros with the gang at Wesley. I felt that it became detrimental to the relationships within the group. I can clearly remember arguments about who was unfairly picking on whom, and who was always getting punted off the map more, and there was always a perception difference that they were the one being picked on, and the other person thought the same. So, between that and thinking about the damned game what Max said was compulsively, I stopped and really haven’t looked back since.

I guess that I see similar trends happening here.

I really don’t appreciate being told to dodge and fire, or whatever obvious objective is going on. Do you really take me for such an idiot that I don’t know what I am supposed to do, and recognize that knowing what to do and being able to do it are two different things and the general objective of tasks like that, to figure out how to rub your belly and pat your head, except with a joystick, a, b, x, y, l, and r buttons? Don’t patronize me and don’t state the obvious because I won’t take it well. Being the butt of conversations like “man I hit you a lot”, “I’ve never seen anyone get hit that much”, “damn, I can’t believe you got hit like 6 times!”, “I’ve never hit anybody that much”. Man, that pisses me off, and did, and I basically said ‘night at that point and jetted. Because what I hear is “you suck, you suck, you suck”.

I really don’t appreciate it, either, when you say “I’m no good at this” and then beat me. I really don’t appreciate it when I get compemented as being a contender in one breath, and then get this trash talk 2 seconds later after you beat me. I just love that you can turn on me on a dime. I really find that trait attractive in my friends.

I have for a while been feeling a really wierd vibe coming from these guys. And maybe last night was when it finally clicked for me that maybe it is a lot about how much love and compassion and mercy that they have for each other and for me. It’s a very disturbing thing to me to think that people would have friends solely for the perks. That the major reason that you would make a conscious decision to talk to me and be my “friend” (which there apparently is a definition for), is for the stuff that I’ll give you for free, or the questions that I can answer for you about building your house, or the answers I can give you about how to wire up your new arcade cabinet, or the cat5 I can pull for you in your new house, or the soldering that I can do for you.

It’s beyond me how you could only have friends for the things that they can give you and not for their intrinsic value as a friend. And it may not quite be to that exteme, but man, I think that it’s close, and that’s disturbing to me. Love at Wesley was palpable, and even when there was disagreement or competition (especially when there was disagreement or competition) you knew exactly where you stood with that person. You knew that they didn’t hate you, you knew that they loved you, you knew that they would do anything for you, and you knew that they respected you. Maybe that wasn’t your experience, but it definitely was for me. If ever I recieved criticism, I knew that it was out of love, and it becomes hard to argue when you know the other person is guinuely looking out for you best interests out of love. Maybe that’s what’s remarkably missing from all of this, genuine love.

So, for anyone still reading this, I appluad you. I did a word count, and it’s 1900+. Not terribly big by my standards, but I think it might be the biggest on the blog. The length would also imply that this has been really festering in me, and that I needed to vent. A bunch. Not sure exactly what this yet means for me and my so-called-friends. I would doubt that much will change in the short-term, but as a general rule, me being more concious of my concerns causes them to grow, and so they are probably on a collision course now. To all the single women who’ve made it thus far, there should be some decent material up there for how my mind works. But, if you asked me to try to explain it more, you probably wouldn’t get very far, and you would probably just make me mad. (Which is something that I wish weren’t true (me getting upset/mad at you), but that’s what I think would happen.) Here’s to hoping that there’s at least one girl out there who can trick me into talking about it without making me mad in the process…

I never really figured out what video blogs where until I ran across some on youtube. Basically video instead of text. Got it. Not much more interesting, but a little since it’s video and not text. Probably the same thing that is appealing about “podcasts” which are really just rss feeds of audio. Anyway, this is the one that I ran across. Don’t know why it’s intriguing, but it is… Probably has something to do with the editing, which seems oddly really good. Oh, I almost forgot that on her Myspace, she notes that Richard Feynman is her hero…

Ok, so since I originally discovered this video blogger, I’ve since come to the conclusion that it’s a fake. This makes it still entertaining, but much less so, and much more about trying to figure out where they’re going with it and what’ll come next. If you search for the username, you can see people’s theories about it. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s somebody’s exercise to get girls interested in science…

Since I now have a whole boat load of friends who are teachers, did anybody prank their classes the first week? Like speaking in a really thick Russian accent or the like?

I claim the intersection.
The major Man Clan offensives (at the girl’s house and at the girl’s movie night).
The fun van to Florida.
Doughnuts in the parking lot with the van.
Getting a phone message from some irate lady about my driving in LA.
Coed-naked showering.
Accidentally and unknowingly smuggling a little burro through customs.
Getting my ring and watch almost stolen in Mexico.
Crashing the “Fifth Element” party at the Dumplex.
The Funplex, aka the Dumbplex.
Summer sand volleyball with the Trinkas, et al.
Many a shack-a-thon build, especially in the Fellowship Hall.
Scaring Rachel out of her mind on work project.
Crunchtime all-nighters.
Meat-men all-nighters (I’m burning my eyes out! and Brizkit).
Elaine slicing her hand open on game day.
Lots of dish washing.
Yellow meal.
The Julia Lang (Johnson) Memorial Drink Dispenser.
Where’s my shoe?!?

Ok, a few more than three.

I should not have stayed up until 4:30 last night. I was playing around with Wordpress, trying to finish what I had started. One thing let to another, and it was after 4 in the morning. It was just one of those times when you get into a groove, and you don’t want to sleep or eat until you’re done…

Apparently I thought these links where worthy of being put into a blog post, but at the moment I don’t recall why, and I’m too lazy to click on them to remember, so here they are:
http://progressive.org/mag_mc071906
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026951.php#026951

I also trashed my D-Link. I couldn’t take it anymore. I fashioned my 2U into a temporary router, but I really should get a WRT54GL, so I don’t have a pretty large machine sitting on top of my dryer. :)

What a night!

I think that I firmly hate my D-Link broadband router. D-Link, if you’re reading this, consider me a lost customer. I must have been locking up every 5 minutes, with very little traffic running through it. I’ve already not been very happy because it locks up at the drop of a hat and at the slightest power dip. Linksys will be my new best friend. It’s a shame, too, because I was pretty happy with them, esp with the wap at Wesley, but it died sometime back, and apparently was pretty hard to diagnose that it was bad, but I digress. And, on top of all of that, when I bought it, it came with a rebate, but I never filled it out! Doh! So my piece of sh#t router cost me something like $80.

That made the evening pretty interesting on its own, but wait, there’s more. I’d been hearing this dripping sound coming from my ac/furnace/water heater closet for some time now. I don’t have access, but what I lack in key, I more than make up for in arm length. Did you know that I have long arms? Anyway, there is a large intake vent in this tiny little closet that I “don’t have access to”. For those of you following along at home, this is where the long arms come in. For you see that my arms are long enough, after I take the vent cover off, to reach the lock and unlock the door from the inside. Brilliant! Since the a/c was working, and the water dripping was dripping onto the water heater and down its drain, I was in no hurry to put in a work order and be woken up at like 8am when they want to come fix it. So, I let it go. Big mistake apparently. Did you know that you can completely freeze up an a/c unit? I didn’t. I knew about having to defrost freezers and the like, but never an air conditioning unit. What is this the 50s? Anyhoo, there wasn’t any air coming from the vents, and I figured that I was just going to have to bite the bullet and call them in the morning. But, it was really hot in the apartment. I noticed that it wasn’t getting very cool in the apartment over the weekend, but just chalked it up to it being really hot outside. But, since there wasn’t any air coming from the vents, I figured that I should investigate before I try to go to bed and can’t even get to sleep naked. Hey, stop picturing me naked! Also, the vent is protected by some very long screws. You know, the kind of screws that taunt you because they make your forearms hurt. These screws are incidently one of many arguments for me buying a drill, but again, I digress. So, after getting these four really long screws out, I threw the breakers to be extra safe. Upon inspection of the unit, I decided to take out the filter that sits at the bottom of the unit. Huh, I said unit… But, it wouldn’t budge. Even closer inspection revealed this white stuff know by scientists as Dihydrogen Monoxide. This was in its solid form, which explained several things. One, why when the a/c cut off that there was a dripping sound, and two, why there was no air coming out of the vents, even though the fan was spinning. So, since I was really hot, and I wanted to be cold, I figured that I would let the dern thing defrost. This is where things started to get interesting. For you see that when Dihydrogen Monoxide changes state from a solid to a liquid, it often will make a large mess, depending on the quantity. Now, I am on at least the second floor. I doubt very much that my downstairs neighbors would like to have this substance enter their home and cause much havoc. I don’t blame them. I equally do not wish for my carpet or other wood in the house to be ruint or otherwise need attention. So, when the global warming started to happen (I can now firmly put to rest that global warming is in fact occuring, as I saw it with my own two eyes), I did the obvious thing. I started to take pictures. So, I have some, they’ll get posted to the photoblog soon enough, but I’m in the middle of telling a cool story to my cool readers, and I don’t want to stop. Back to the story. So, after some pictures, I used my leet water divining skills, learned as a young padawan at my home in Canyon, and used every trick in the book to divert water where it needed to go and where it would cause the least amount of damage (and just go down the drain). With the crisis averted and the water safely down the drain, I told the story to my faithful readers, oh, wait, that’s you.

[Watching "Spaceballs: The Movie". They reach "now" in the movie.]
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You’re looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What hapened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We’re at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: I can’t.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.

So, we’ve now reached now, and I’m getting a little tired of this now, as I can imagine are you. Hopefully I will not sweat too much in my sleep, that I can sleep, and that since I’ve turned the a/c on, that it will cool off the apt and not freeze up for Quite Some TimeTM.

I’ve been really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really bored lately. Some might say that it’s my own fault, and they’re right, but it’s my blog and I can cry if I want to. So, I packaged Wizd for Debian (files available permanently here and for as long as I feel like it