Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Digicide

I remember years gone by when I used to be on IRC 24/7 and on Mucks 24/7, Wonder if anyone is looking for me.
Digicide: "It’s tough to tell when someone disappears. You always just figure they’re busy at work, or studying for finals, or on vacation, or something of the sort, so none of us thought anything was strange when we didn’t see Nodek for a while. Actually, to be brutally honest, none of us even noticed. I mean, he was kind of quiet to begin with, and only piped up when he had something to say. Half the time, you’d have to check the room list to know that he was even there. So I don’t know how long it took us. Maybe a week. Maybe two. But then, one day, this troll shows up and says something like:

NoobLOL42: star wars is for fagz!!!

We don’t get trolls very often, but Nodek was some kind of film geek, so he’d always rip them a new one in words that none of us understood. It was pretty funny to watch, actually, and it became kind of a running joke. So Jil says:

AdminJil4984: nodek? u hungry?

and there was no reply.

NoobLOL42: whos nodek?

AdminJil4984: whos nodek?!?!?!?!?!?

The last one to see him had been 3jane, who said she was in PM with him a few weeks ago, but when we tried to check the logs we got a server error. We weren’t freaked, though. Like I said, people come and go. We shot off a few PMs, but since we figured he w"

Monday, December 12, 2005

Civic Duty

Civic Duty: "It was Friday evening and Lucas was getting ready to perform his duty. He’d already tugged off his leather loafers to put on a pair of combat boots. He’d disheveled his black hair in front of the bathroom mirror and traded his pinstripe jacket for an old worn t-shirt and army fatigue vest. After arranging these things, he looked himself over in the full body mirror and decided whether or not he would be afraid of himself.

Lucas ate a bowl of chicken noodle soup and drank some iced tea. He figured he could make use of the empty tea bottle as a Molotov cocktail if need be, and he chuckled at the thought. It was funny to him how he came to think of this as humorous. The rest of the world never seemed to get the joke.

8:00 pm rolled around and he heard the phone ring in the kitchen. He wiped off his mouth after finishing the soup and went to pick up the line. “Hello, Merryweather residence. Lucas speaking.” Lucas listened as the reminder that his Friday night was ruined berated him through the receiver.

“Look, I already told you,” Lucas continued as he went to tap the opened letter on the counter as if he’d somehow forgotten why he was dressed like this. “I have Riot Duty today. I told you this last week. No, we can’t play poker. No, I can’t get out of this. You know"

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Adsum

Adsum: "The glass beads were black and white: tiny flattened circles that made a loud clattering sound when he emptied the bag onto the glowing white floor. Most of the 1,394 settled within a few feet of his legs, although a few rolled to the outer reaches of the room.

“The problem here is that you don’t understand the potential,” Sudoku told her without lifting his attention from the beads. “You use this thing to play games and watch stimvids. You’ve never even opened the console.”

“And this is the console.”

“This is what the console looks like today.”

From her position on the floor across from him, Ery glanced around the room, then snorted. “Nice. Well, now that that’s over with, I’m going to go finish my coffee.”

“This room isn’t actually empty,” he said when the edges of her body started to shimmer with logout. She recondensed with a sigh that was slightly louder than necessary.

“I know an empty room when I see one.”

“There’s me. And you.”

“And stimvid pickup lines, apparently. But there’s coffee back in your apartment, and it’s winning.”

He wiped the beads into a small pile, then swept them onto his palm before spilling them over the floor again. “What’s a st"

Monday, November 28, 2005

Using an Oscilloscope

Using an Oscilloscope: "Ever wonder what an Oscilloscope is? Or how to use one? Here's a good guide on getting starting 'An oscilloscope is easily the most useful instrument available for testing circuits because it allows you to see the signals at different points in the circuit. The best way of investigating an electronic system is to monitor signals at the input and output of each system block, checking that each block is operating as expected and is correctly linked to the next. With a little practice, you will be able to find and correct faults quickly and accurately.' Link."

Father Knows Best

Father Knows Best: "I don’t remember being a citizen, but when I was growing up, it was all my father ever talked about. ‘Back in the valley,’ he would say, and point to the acrylic mural that took up most of the wall by the front door. It looked nothing like a valley. It was a jumble of angles and curves, oddly pixellated like most of my mother’s art. I don’t remember much of my mother either, but there are bits and pieces of her all over the apartment, plotted out in meticulous detail on nearly every flat surface. Of course, my father wanted me to go into something with computers. He still does. “Dennou,” he says, when I meet him for coffee, “when are you going to give up that mess and buy yourself a datafeed?” “I have a datafeed, dad.” Actually, I have six. Only one has been turned on, and I use it as a lamp in the hallway. Across from me, my father began listing the merits of computer operation, chuckling and gesturing like he was describing a woman he wanted to set me up with. I smiled and nodded a few times, but we both knew nothing would come of it. It’s not that I don’t know how to use a computer. I grew up around them, after all. I used to type eighty words per minute, but I haven’t tried in months. My father has never been aw"

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Set: geeky card-game that rewires your brain

Sounds like something neat to try, I think I'll look for it in town.

Set: geeky card-game that rewires your brain: "Cory Doctorow: Last week on a rainy afternoon in Amsterdam, I ended up playing a few hands of Set on a friend's houseboat. I'd watched the game played once before at a nerdy event, and the fiendish intensity of the players was a gigantic warning-sign -- this was a game with an event-horizon, something that would suck me in and never let me out again. It's true: Set is amazingly addictive, a nerdy game of great fascination, one that makes your brain reel and reconfigure itself, so the whole world starts to appear Set-like after a few hours' play. The dealer puts down twelve cards, and players hunch over them, trying to find three-card sets. For three cards to form a set, each of their attributes must either match or diverge. There are four attributes with three possible configurations each: shading (solid, outline, grey); color (blue, red, green); number (one, two, three) and shape (rectangle, oval, squiggle). It's a little like Boggle in that the winning strategy is a combination of directed searching and general unfocusing of the eyes and trusting to intuition to make the sets pop out of the well. Players are penalized for calling out false sets, which happens all the time, since once you engage the pattern-matching centers of your brain, they can't help but see phantom sets in the cards."

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Better day today

No Chest pain that I can recall, My head feels more together now that I'm off the medication.

Free lunch, Burgers & Chips for the Advertising open house.

Got MySQL replication working on the DR Server.

Still no luck with DBD::mysql tho.

Went to the river office on the way home to look at the ethernet in their conference room, Didnt find any problems so I spent some time showing one of the people there that yes it works and then gave him info on how to use the WIFI access point we have there as well.

The escort is acting up, I need to check the plugs and filters this weekend, could be the fuel or air filter maybe.

And with that I'm going to bed , Gotta go to the allergist tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

'Fun' day

More chest pain, Chest pain in the morning on the way to work, Chest pain at work, Chest pain at lunch, Chest pain when leaving work, Yay!

Worked on a couple things at work today, rebuilding the Disaster Recovery server on the drive that had the corrupt fileystem, Got 10.3.9 installed, all the patches and the new XCode.

Turns out we've been installing XCode 1.2 from CD when there's a download of XCode 1.5 and a update to it.

Still no luck compiling DBD::mysql with the new XCode, I have no idea why it is failing and it is quite frustrating.

I did get zziplib compiled and php zip support working I think.

Had to enable .htaccess support and register_globals for php on a virtual host today for the redesign work.

Called apple about the trouble I'm having getting SSL to work on my mail servers, Fat lot of good that did, What's the use of Applecare Premuim support if they wont help you when you have a problem? I mean this is stuff right out of the OS X Server manual and its not freaking working!!!

Spent most of my time on the phone with applecare registering the server and figuring out which plan went with which server, I created a spreadsheet for it so I can keep things straight in the future.

I also registered the rest of the XServes as the apple guy mentioned they were running out of time to be registered, tomorrow I need to remember to register the XRAID.

I'll also be working on getting MySQL Replication going on the DR server so I have the databases live on it, Cant recall how I did that last time but google is my friend.

Speaking of google, I had a friend call me on my work phone today to google something for him because he was driving! What a dork, He was going out to get a pizza but got the address wrong. Dont we have something called 411 for that?

Chest pain again last night (Twice!)

Had more chest pain last night, I tried to use my new inhaler for one of them but it didnt seem to do anything.

Right now my chest is a little bit tight.

Just had a some oatmeal for breakfast, I'll take my last pill in just a bit.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Chest pain again.

Maybe its food related, I just realized that both tonight and last night I ate a corn dog kinda late, after my normal meal times.

I'll have to see what I can do to determine this.

Anyway onto the day,

I woke up with a little bit of chest pain, not a whole lot of it however.

Had a breakfast of the 'Tortilla De Patatas' which I've linked this post to.

I modified the instructions slightly, Used frozen potato gratings (hash browns I guess) instead of fresh cut potatoes and I added in some sausage I had and then sprinkled on some cheese, Turned out OK but I dunno if I'll add the meat again.

I didn't get a lot done before work, Not sure if I really did anything but check mail and read webcomics thinking back on the morning.

Today wasn't all that great at work, I forgot to bring my lunch so I had to eat out with some former co-workers.

We went to Eegees, I got the meatball sub thinking Rob always gets one so it must be good... Boy was I wrong, Rob gets the meatball sub at Subway not at Egees and the meatabll sub at Eegees sucks.

Most of the help desk staff was gone or in training today so that left me manning the help desk phones, that always distracts me and makes it harder to get my own tasks done.

Had to replace a disk that had failed in a server today, made a backup of the disk with the semi corrupt filesystem in another server and started the format process of that disk in the hopes that I can use it again after a fresh OS install.

Lets see.. Tomorrow I need to remember to check the fluid levels in the car and go for another bike ride, I was bad and didn't go today or yesterday and I wont be loosing any weight if I keep putting it off!

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Cheast pain

Ugh.

Maybe its being caused by the carpet cleaning spay we used to clean up cat barf.

Quick update before I sleep

I've been up since 4AM due to having to go into work.

Had two slices of toast, bottle of OJ and a fried egg with cheese for breakfast when I got up.

I'm a little early taking my pill but I'm tired and want to get some more sleep in, I should have gone to bed earlier last night but I didn't.

Last week when I did this I went to bed real early Saturday and pulled a 20 hour day Sunday, don't think I'm gonna be doing that today tho.

The escort drove OK which is good, the power steering is much better after tightening the belts.

Power change at work wasn't the big deal it was supposed to be, the data center never lost power and the auxiliary rooms that did were not without power long enough for their UPS systems to die.

I swapped a server out while I was there, pulled the system foam the DR rack and put it in the Production rack so I can work on re-building a new DR system on the failed production machine from last week.

I wanted to switch the network ports for the VPN concentrator so it'd be on a full duplex port but by the time I was ready to make the change it had already started to see use from the remote sites so I'll have to try to do it some other time.

Anyway, I'm going to lay down now and try to get some sleep, I'll go for a bike ride when I get back up again.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Stuffit 10 Rocks!


So are games getting larger or is my iBook getting slower?

Pluto Immortal

365 Tomorrows has a short story every day about the future, I recently started to read it and this is one I really like.

Pluto Immortal: "Marcus wiped blood from his chin. The thick red fluid stuck to his fingers. He stood slowly, pushing himself up off the ground with all the dignity he could muster as his foe stood proud and arrogant. Marcus’ feet were pressed into the soft Mars soil as he readied himself again. “You fool!” Marcus screamed out across the yards between him and his adversary. “You do not comprehend how much more precious is my life than yours! I am Mars-born!” Gaither kept his eyes on his quarry and turned his attention inward for a moment. Focus the rage. Do this professionally. It’s a high-profile case; lots of media attention. Don’t give them any reason to cry brutality. His fist ached from cracking into the Red Planet monster’s jaw. He shook it off and pushed the pain back down, eyes boiling with a deluvian hatred that conquered all other emotion. He knew that if he didn’t kill him today, Marcus would go on living for another four hundred years. All of the Mars-born did- at least the ones who could escape Marcus’ knife. This time, however, Gaither had to stop him. Ninety-seven murders, eighteen rapes, and so many robberies that NASA police were still piecing it all together; Marcus had outdone every other criminal in extra-Earth territory. It stopped here. The fiend spat blood, shaking off the solid hit that ja"

Geek to Live: The Usable Home

Interesting article at lifehacker about designing a functional space.

Geek to Live: The Usable Home: " by Gina Trapani As a computer programmer in a new apartment, I've taken the same approach to setting up my home as I would developing a software application: with a focus on usability. Like any good software package, my home should be a tool that helps me get things done, a space that's a pleasure to be in and a launch pad for daily tasks as well as my life goals. Whether the task at hand is to relax after work, phone a family member, or keep track of a dry cleaning receipt, there are lots of simple ways to create a living space that makes getting things done a breeze. I'm no home organization expert, but here are a few tips I've gleaned over time that can help make your house a Usable Home. Create space for incoming stuff Every day you walk into the house with your hands full of mail, pockets full of change and a cell phone that needs recharging. Instead of dumping that pile of bills onto the coffee table, scattering a mess of pennies and dimes on your dresser and tossing the phone onto a table, create useful places to drop off stuff without having to think. Say, a large change jar that goes to Coinstar every few months, an indoor mailbox for you and your housemates, and a phone-charging center with an easily-accessible plug. Fact is, after a long day at work, you don't"

Morning

I slept better last night than I did the night before, didn't wake up in the middle of the night with my heart beating like I'd just run up a couple flights of stairs.

Took my pill with breakfast like I'm supposed to.

Even remembered to brush my teeth which is something I'm bad about forgetting on weekends after meals.

As planned I went on my first bike ride today after airing up the tires on the bike, Its a lot harder than it looks.

I made it up Condor to Lanuire??? I think but I was too winded and my heart was pounding in my chest to make it any further than that so I rested for a minute and turned around and came back home.

Had to lay down next to my Hepa filter for about 10 minutes before I could breath enough and my heart had slowed down to normal.

Friday, October 21, 2005

This Morning

This is day two on Prednisone.

Last night was interesting, as listed I ended up quite thirsty, had to then use the bathroom a lot because of everything I drank, I didn't suffer from any insomnia or anything but I did wake up at one point with a super fast heart beet.

Good news is today my chest pain is much less than what it was all the other days of this week, Its still there but its a lot less.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Dental Work

Today I went to a dentist for the first time in my life to deal with a tooth I broke.

The options I were given by the doctor were (1) Pull the tooth or (2) Have the tooth repaired but with a high chance of the tooth breaking while being repaired and needing to be pulled anyway.

I went with the pull, Quicker, Cheaper, Easier.

Hurts like hell, and the bleeding, yuck.

Wish I was home instead of at work.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Zaurus Video Success

I have video playback working on my Zaurus using mplayer.

This is with Open Zaurus 3.5.2 on my Zaurus 5500 Personal Mobile Tool.

I use the following to encode:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/mencoder $1 -srate 24000 -vf eq=10:-0,scale=320:-2::: -o Zaurus.$1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=15:mode=3 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=150 -ofps 15 -sws 2

I call the above zmencoder.sh I give it a filename and it spits out a Zaurus.filename encoded file.

I play it on the Zaurus with mencoder with the following in my .mplayer/config
ac=mad
cache=4096

I no longer need to use -framedrop or -hardframedrop to play back video.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Shipped the G3

I shipped out the G3 I'm giving to a Open Source developer today via the UPS Store.

He should have it monday if all goes well, I made sure to get insurance on the computer and had them pack it.

Hopefully this will enable the developer to make a OS X version of his program.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Batteries...

I wonder how much money I waste on disposable batteries.

I just tossed out two "Energizer E2 Titanium" batteries that were running my mouse and replaced them with some normal Duracells.

Thinking about it I have another battery powered mouse,Two cameras and a GPS that take Double A batteries, I'm gonna try to keep track of how many I go through in a period of time.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

A new Top, A Topless Scout, A scout meeting!

It's been a busy day!

This morning I went shopping for the week and got some frozen food to take to work for lunch, Then I went to the east side of town and picked up my new top for the scout with my Dad.

We got a pretty good deal, $110 for the top, Normally they cost between $300 and $600.

The top is in OK shape, its got some holes in it from a lightbar and it needs to be painted.

So when we got home my father started to take the old top off while I had the unpleasant job of cleaning the fish tank.

Later after we got the top off Jon came by to take some pictures and go for a ride in it without the top.

We got the new rear bulkhead mostly in place, there are some bolts that don't fit right so we will have to work on it some more this week, But it was good enough for me to drive to the meeting.

The meeting was good, Got to see people I had not seen in a while and I finally got my Rendevous kit from last year which Joel had been bringing to meeting after meeting in the hopes of catching me.

There was a new guy at the meeting, has a '79 scout that he bought 'new' with 2000 miles on it from a IH dealer in '79.

Quite impressive to see one with the interior in it still.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Crash & Burn

I didnt actually forget to blog tuesday.

When I got home from work I went to lay down because of a headache but instead fell asleep before 7pm!

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Closet Cleaning

I'm doing a big cleaning / organizing of my closet today.

Current results:

5 pairs of well fitting pants
18 well fitting shirts
11 T-Shirts
3 Car/Yard work shirts
5 shirts I want to slim down to be able to wear
4 pairs of pants that fit but are not well fitting
3 black sweaters that fit
2 pairs of sweat pants
2 jackets
1 vest
1 windbreaker

1 iMac? (Forgot I had one)

Lan Party

I just got home from today's Lan Party at RD.

The attendees were Doug, Doug, Jason, Jimmy, Chris, Rich, Brian, and Myself.

We played from about 11AM to 11:30PM which is when Jimmy and I left, I don't know how many more hours the rest played.

Starwars Battlefront and The Battle for Middle-Earth were our games this time.

We stopped for lunch about 1 or 2 and did sandwiches, Quizno's for most and Eegees for Brian Jason and Myself.

Dinner was late, maybe 7 or 8pm at PeiWei.

The drive home was nice at 11:30, it was pitch black and there was not a lot of traffic on the roads so I took a longer route than usual on the side-roads instead of taking I10 to get home.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Moving up in the building

Today I made a serious effort to get moved out of my office in the lower level and into my new corner of the IT room.

With the help of Jimmy I now have network connectivity to both the inside and outside networks.

Eric and Mike were nice as well and I netted a replacement PC and a new eMac, I hear there is also a G5 iMac and a new flat panel in the works for me.

I like working in the IT department sofar!

Also today I attended a goodbye kind of lunch that the former VP above Online held, It was at Micha's which was decent food, Not the best food around in my opinion but still nice. It was a little strange since not only is the Online department its own stand alone department now instead of being under Marketing I have also left the department with my reporting to IT starting Monday.

Funny

anole:~$ screen -x
Suddenly the Dungeon collapses!! - You die…

Yay for screen.

I just learned it has a 'nethack' mode where if you go into command mode and do a nethack on there are other amusing messages.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Ouch

Ow, I fell just after finishing with dinner tonight.

I was sitting crosslegged on the floor infront of a small table where I was eating, I got up and evidently didnt notice my foot/leg was asleep and over I went.

I think I either sprained or broke part of my foot, it hurts quite a lot.

Good news is that I missed hitting the Bed, Table, TV and Tivo on the way down.

Time for some pain killers and bed.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Work

I'm trying to remember what all I did at work today.

Swapped out the two tape drives on Algol that stopped working with the last spare drive from the Annex, It's only a DLT4000 instead of the DLT7000 I was using so none of my existing tapes are readable.

I ran a cleaning tape through it before I put it into service in the hopes that it will work.

The drive also seems dog slow, I've been dumping a file to it since early this afternoon and its still not done.

Oh, I also finished up the TNI Intranet server, Moved some MySQL data around via the wonderful phpmyadmin, I love that tool.

Compiled RRDtool on the new intranet server so Cacti will be able to produce its graphs of all the switches in the building.

Did a followup check on the new citizenmail server to make sure I actually finished it.

Moved a box of books from my office to my new desk (And hurt my back in the process, Note to self don't fill boxes with books, they get heavy!) and took down some awards in my office I wont have room for.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Digg

Found another neat site today: digg

Digg feels like a cross between Slashdot and Metafilter, I'm currently reading through the archive of past stories for neat articles.

Lunch with Louis

I had a nice lunch today with my friend Louis,

Louis came by to pick up a pair of SPUD brackets and a 2 gig SCSI drive for the Sun Ultra 1 that he is attempting to put Debian Linux on.

We drove over to El Gorrion and had the #4 plate which I love so much.

Funny thing is that we ran into part of my normal lunch group (Rob, Kerry and Tim) also having lunch at El Gorrion.

After lunch Louis drove back to TNI a different route than the one I had planned to show me a restaurant that he recommended that I try from when he worked in the area.

When we returned to TNI I gave Louis what was supposed to be a short tour but it ended up being half an hour long as I showed the two levels of the press and related folders inserters and binders.

del.icio.us

I have decided to once again attempt to use web-based bookmarks to keep track of bookmarks I use on multiple computers.

I have in the past tried Furl and SiteBar, I hope that del.icio.us works well.

You can see my current bookmarks via the attached link.

Monday, January 03, 2005

Happy Newyear

So far my newyears resolution is to attempt to blog more.

I will start with the New Years eve party that I went to.

It was hosted at Chris's house, Not a lot of people I knew showed up but that was OK, it was a pretty small gathering and I felt privileged to be invited.

Jimmy and Rich were there along with their wives, Chris's brother showed up with his wife, Shannon's mother was there and there were three pairs of couples who's names I can no longer remember.

It was a lot of fun, There were a couple delays with the food due to overloading the grill I think but that was OK.

Played some gamecube, Set off some fireworks and had a great time.

I made sure I hadn't drank any alcohol in the hours before I left for home and I made it home without any problems except for my fingers got damn cold due to the lack of heat in my borrowed car.