Brainsoup

Your mail client needs a service.

Despite all the Microsoft buyout nonsense, I'm betting on Yahoo! Why? Cause of things like Zimbra. While watching the installer for Zimbra Desktop finish up and I noticed it was starting it's service.

Wait, my email client needs an always on windows service?
...
Of course it does. Every other application I run gets a tray icon, why don't I elevate my email to an even higher priority than that?

I'm betting on Zimbra at work too. Yahoo, don't mess this up. Get back in the game.

Lakeside Charter School at Elon Homes for Children

Now that it's been three years since I was teaching there, I'm posting a couple photos from my time at Lakeside Charter School in Elon, NC. (I withheld my photos that showed the faces of children for privacy reasons). Lakeside was a public charter school at which I was the "Computer Teacher" in 2004. They closed closed in early fall 2005, it seems to have reopened as a private prep school under the name The Elon School this past August with a new mission of offering "high academics".

I'm not going to pull any punches here, Elon Homes For Children is what used to be called an orphanage. A home for lost children if you will. So unsurpisingly it had close ties to community churches; as I imagine it still does. When they opened a publicly funded charter school, they apparently forgot to leave that behind though. The picture to your left is just inside what was the front entrance. Additionally the lobby had a two large pieces of art depicting angels and a small waiting area with magazines and some suggested reading. Oh, and the principals office always had the nice soothing sound of AM Christian Talk Radio playing quietly in the background. The ACLU might've frowned upon such things in 2004/2005 while I was there since the school was state funded, but now that they've gone private, they can do whatever they want.

Time keeps on slipping

This month's wired has a couple interesting articles about time. One about amatuer time dorks.

"It was the best extra 22 nanoseconds I've ever spent with the kids," Van Baak says.

The other article is about the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) the official United States timekeepers:

At that level, clocks will be precise enough that they'll have to correct for the relativistic effects of the shape of the earth, which changes every day in reaction to environmental factors. [...]On a moving ship, such a clock would change rate with the shape of the ocean floor, and even the density of the earth beneath. On a volcano, it would change with the moving and vibrating of magma within. Scientists using maps of these variations could differentiate salt and freshwater, and perhaps eventually predict eruptions, earthquakes or other natural events from the variations in gravity under the surface of the planet.

You could passively visualize pedestrians on a sidewalk, O'Brian says, "from the microwaves of the Doppler shift of someone walking."

Dude, time radar? Sick.
Continue reading "Time keeps on slipping"

US plane N987SA crashes with 4 tons (6 tons?) of Cocaine in Mexico

Not a lot of mainstream news coverage of this, but apparently a plane crashed in a Mexico jungle with a few tons of Cocaine aboard. A plane which was also formerly used by the CIA to transport people and/or things to Guantanamo. Nice. I've seen this covered in a handful of news sources I've don't know enough about to trust, but nothing mainstream. Until now. The 10/29/07 episode of WBEZ's WorldView gives a good overview of it. Here's a 13 minute MP3 of the program. This is why America's war on drugs is about as effective as our war on terror...cause if you've got the money for a private plane, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it.

Wikipedia Fact #16754

The United States Postal Service webstore (shop.USPS.com) sells two singles from the band The Postal Service.

ArsTechnica had the scoop back in 2004, but I found it on The Postal Service wikipedia page

Shenzhen, city of the future.

Interesting article and slideshow in from July's Atlantic about Shenzhen, a new city in China. Including some pictures and mention of a rediculous computer market with hundreds (thousands?) of individual stalls, each selling all sorts of electronic components, from CPUs and cables to switches and capacitors. Also noted, is America's largest export by volume to China is scrap paper and scrap metal. Apparently Shenzu is a port city near Hong Kong with some pretty intense urban planning, which you can see on google maps of the area, a little more at Wikipedia. China fascinates me, I was even thinking of taking a Chinese class at Columbia, but being that it meets four evenings a week for 75minutes, it would put a serious dent in my attempts to, well, do anything.

I sure do wish someone would buy me a subscription to the Atlantic<winkwink nudgenudge> that's almost like speaking chinese, right?

Take a look a minute and check out the annotated slideshow (click, watch, listen) or the article (subscription required) and if you've got the time, the I've even ripped the full article PDF from Proquest. (via BoingBoing)

Scrap metal, much better than minimum wage

Just saw interesting folks pulling scrap out of a dumpster across the street from my apartment. So I decided to go down and chat with them. There were two guys working pulling out assorted items, brass removed from a sink, copper from electronics, aluminum mini-blinds and some other assorted metals (metal from exterior light fixtures, curtain rods, bike rims, etc). I chatted with one of the guys and he's been doing this for 20 years! He got into the business working the other side of the counter at a recycling center, earning minimum wage, watching homeless guys walk away with checks for $200+. So he quit, and started collecting scrap. He says he averages about $200 a night. He also is quick to criticize other folks who make a mess and ruing it for folks like him. He makes sure to keep everything in the containers he scraps from and not just leave a mess on the sidewalk. I asked him which metals were most valuable and what he got for them? Copper ($1.68/lb) and brass($0.74). Seems inline with the prices in the table (for the curious TL=truckload, LTL=less than truckload).

So here's some food for thought, say he rebells against a 5 day work week and only works the nights between weekdays, takes a generous 8 weeks of vacation a year and earns a little less than he claimed to me. $175/day 4 days a week 44 weeks = $30800. That's more than I made working full time, 5days a week, with 2weeks of vacation starting out at a software development firm (in NC...cost of living is much less than here in NYC, but still). Of course I got health insurance, but after watching SiCKO this evening somehow that seems less valuable that it did yesterday, but hey I'll save that for another post.

(daily scrap prices from demolitionscrapmetalnews.com)

Let's play work!

a ThingPart comic.

This American Life comes to showtime

March 22 Showtime is premiering a television version of This American Life. After watching the television trailer it looks they're doing a decent job at preserving the soul of the radio show. Keeping it to half an hour I think can help a lot, 60 full minutes of video can be tiresome. This almost inspired me to go to Boston for a live TAL event at the Boston Opera House, but $35 tickets + $9.25 "convenience charge" for the cheapest balacony seats seems a little much for me.

Brainsoup back again

After a not-so-brief hiatus, brainsoup is back. The culprit? A missing iptables rule for local postgresql connections. What's that translated to non-geek speak?

Brainsoup couldn't connect to it's data.
It's fixed.
Yay.

Soon i'll just get rid of the blog all together and replace it with something custom written in django.

Throw pillows in the backseat

Quote overheard at Amherst Coffee: "I want to put throw pillows in the backseat".

I've currently got a lap duvet in my backseat. Perhaps pillows would enhance the experience. Or maybe I should just keep it a little cleaner.

Nokia E70 Woes Part 1 (Hardware)

I've been lusting after a Nokia E70 for the last year and while on this trip was presented with a dead phone (nokia 6820) and an opportunity to pick up the E70 in chicago. I got it, the Nokia branded leather case and a 2gb miniSD card for it. I felt if I was going to have this phone, I was going to do it right. So let's talk about the issues I've had since then:

Nokia does not manufactur a case for the E70. They sold me a CP-74 case, for the Nokia N90 saying it was the case, but it's not. That would be why the wholes on the sides are in the wrong place. If only that was all that was wrong with the case:
- Inside the case there was a nylon Nokia tag (you know, attached to the soft stuff which doesn't scratch), placed perfectly to scratch both the screen and the camera. The stiching on the tag was sub-par, making sure that every time you pushed the phone into the case, there was a little tail of the tag (above the stiching) which stuck up and scratched. After removing the tag and the GLUE underneath i don't htink it'll scrach any more..
- The case is a little too big for the E70. Although the sales person (Joe) at the Nokia store was happy to show me that the case fit the phone snuggly, it fits it almost snugly. The N90 is 112x51x24mm whereas the E70 is 117x53x22mm. Not only is the E70 5mm longer (causing it to stick out above the top of the case exposed) but it's a little narrower. So it slides out easier than it should. Which leads us to...
- The belt clip is rotates very easily. On the second day I had the phone I bumped the case on something and it happily rotated 180degrees dumping the phone onto the floor leaving the happily hanging upside-down on my belt. The scrach that came from this is not a surface scratch, but two deep corner gashes in the plastic. Nice
- The belt clip isn't mounted flushly. So it's quite difficult to actually get it attached to your belt or whatever it is you want to attach it to. (Not that I'd recommend it anyways, as the orientation is variable as hell)
Proprietary dock connector (13pins + ground) reminicient of proprietary connector other manufacturers would use for charging phones; Nokia on the other hand used a standard power jack for the last 4-5years on every phone. I've accumulated three Nokia branded AC adapters which still work.
- The included wired headset uses the dock connector. Instead of using the standard 3.5mm jack (headphones) or a 2.5mm jack like my Nokia 3595 and Nokia 3650 used, the wired headset terminates to a dock connector. If I break the included one, I'll have to buy one from Nokia instead of for $2 from any cell store (or gas station).
- USB also terminates to this dock connector, but you cannot charge through USB. (Unlike the entire recent motorola line (RAZR, SLVR, etc) which have a micro USB port on the side for charging and data transfer).
- Although (because?) they kept the old Nokia charger port (notably unlike N-series Nokias) the dock connector cannot charge the phone. Nokia sells a USB cable which also charges for $60 (CA-70) that has both a dock connector and charging port.
- The dock connector even has poor pin design. While trying to plug in the USB in the dark, I pushed three of the pins in so that they don't make contact properly anymore. I think I did it by plugging it in upside down or slightly off to one side, but anyways, no the USB cable is next to useless. (I can use it if I apply continuous downward pressure on the plug...which I did while waiting 16minutes for the firmware update to run. If I'd let go I would've bricked my phone--but I got through it and got it done. I'll leave stories about that firmware update for another post).
Other minor annoyances

On the side, there is a record button which launches the voice recorder. As far as I can tell there is no way to disable or reassign this. I have a number of 1minute recordings from god knows where.
My 6820 had the same QWERTY flip as the E70, but because the screen resolution was semetrical (160x160 instead of 352x416) the rotate was instant and no application had to readjust itself. On the E70, the application has to rebuild itself and so opening the keypad can sometimes take 8-10 seconds before the app redraws itself. This loss of 5+ seconds often times removes the speed advantage QWERTY typing would have over T9.
No auto keylock after X minutes. Series 40 has had this for a while (both my 3595 and 6820 can do it). I had an app for my 3650 that did it (JJKeylock) but I haven't found an app/setting which enables that on this phone so I am constantly forgetting to lock the phone and...

One final note. When I upgraded my firmware, although i backed up the phone memory to the memory card. It didn't back up my contacts. All gone. You've got to be kidding me.

Architecture in Helsinki in SLC

So, while driving down from Idaho on my way to Arizona, I ended up in Salt Lake City on a sunday night. (10/8). I drove around a little bit; the experience was totally depressing. SLC just seems empty and soulless, especially on a Sunday evening when everything is closed. So I checked out Upcoming.org a site with events from all over the country. I happened to see that Architecture in Helsinki (AIH) was playing. I couldn't quite place them, but I remember hearing about them, I think on NPR. After a quick confirmation from Laura (who had also heard of them) and listening to half a track from their website, I decided I had to go. The show was at In the Venue, which is apparently a pretty hip club in SLC, and I found it without any trouble. Although they wouldn't let me in with my film camera ("If it's got a detachable lens it's "Pro" gear, and not allowed"...if you can fit your digicam in your pocket you can take pictures, but no real cameras) they were nice enough to keep my Timbuk2 bag behind the bar so I didn't have to leave my laptop + camera(s) in my car in the sketchy neighborhood outside.

During the open act, I met a guy (named Bony, "Like Tony with 'B'") who is going to New England Culinary in Burlington, VT in March. He'd never been to the north east and had questions about what a Turnpike was, etc. (he'd only heard it on the Sopranos But once AIH started I was sucked in. The full rich sound that I'd heard on the studio tracks didn't do the songs justice compared to live. Good golly they can play. I ended up hanging out and meeting the band afterwards, which was sweet and picked up a T-shirt and CD to complete the new band experience. The band was super cool and I would love to see them again sometime. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a show that much. And all through random chance cause I was in SLC at the right time with nothing to do. Thank you upcoming and Cingular MediaNet I guess. I imagined that I wouldn't get to see them again any time soon (ever?) as their tour was ending mid-october in LA and they would be going back to Australia after that. But, since then other day they've added another show in NYC at Irving Plaza on November 3rd. I'm definitely going to that! Anyone wanna come?

(link to the SLC event on upcoming which started it all)

Missouri, home of 1.99 gas

This entry would never post to brainsoup. I wrote it up twice all nice and pretty, now I'm just gonna be lazy and get the idea across (finally).

Ideas covered, but lost to the interwebs:

Cheapest gas on the trip...$1.86...$1.99 most places on the interstate. Same price for 89 with Ethenol.
Hardees vs. Carls Jr...MO has Hardees, I haven't seen them in a while. I wonder where the line is.
89.1 The Wood - College radio that sounds like Alt Nation on Sirius. No commercials, little talking. solid.
Claire McCaskill, running for Senate here. Thoughtful, well educated and understands the issues (and understands they are complex). She can directly respond to opponents catch phrases with thoughtful, insightful and accesible commentary. I'd vote for her. (heard her on NPR call in show)

Tripod, film, camera; pain

Since I don't have the actual money to invest in a Canon Digital Rebel or EOS 5D and lenses, I've just been using my old Canon Elan II film camera. It takes quite nice pictures, but film and developing are not cheap. I found a place while I was in Eugene (Dot Dotsons) that did slides onsite and they were able to develop and scan the 6 rolls I had. It ended up being $15/roll with no prints (mostly slides) and crisp 3000x2000 scans. Although when you consider the cost of film, it comes out to about 0.75/cents per frame. I'm still shooting a little bit with my digital camera (Canon PowerShot A75) and with my Nokia E70, but neither offers an actual SLR (through the lens) viewfinder. The A75 has a viewfinder, but it doesn't match up with the picture taken (useful, eh?) so I end up just using the LCD on the back. One of the things I do love about the film camera though, is I can seperate the focus from metering/shutter. So I press one button to set autofocus and then can reframe and adjust fstop/shutter without having worry about focus at all after the initial step.

Two things came of this developing, one there was a roll that half of it had been exposed with April 16th IMF Protest in DC (2000), which I'd forgotten about and just reloaded. Double exposing that first half, destroying some pictures I didn't know existed and making two hours I spent chasing the light in Milwaukie seem silly. Especially since I spent about an hour wandering around trying to take pictures of a bridge, of which no properly exposed pictures survived. I'm going to see if I can get the whole strip scanned a continuous image because the double exposed images do not line-up and look kind of cool sometimes. Perhaps I could print a border for a room or something. All together I have 175 pictures from film (~800mb) that I haven't posted yet to flickr, hopefully soon.

Sad story: I bought a tripod the other day in Sedona, Arizona to replace my former tripod (xmas gift from mom) which had broken right before the trip. After taking about half a roll, I put the tripod (no legs extended) on the hood of my car, took a shot and then stepped away for a moment. Then the camera took a fall to the ground. When it fell, it snapped open the back exposing the half rolll of Velvia 100 I'd taken ($8 down the drain, not to mention the pictures lost) It dented the top of the camera and meant I had almost no pictures of Arizona except the grand canyon. Lame. This made me reconsider the whole film decision, if only for the reduced likelyhood of damage-related loss of pictures.

Technical rant about camera/lens I might buy to follow.
Continue reading "Tripod, film, camera; pain"

Time for another roadtrip visualization (States I've visited)

In place of a real update, here is me cheating. This made the rounds a year or so ago, but seemed suddenly more relevant. I'm in Missouri at the moment, but plan to by the end of this trip have gone through 45/50 states. Leaving just ND, MT and OK missing out of continental 48. Montana and Dakota are too cold for camping in October. I've been happy with the tent and sleeping bag I brought, but know they wouldn't have cut it up there. And I've yet to hear anyone think that the plan to skip OK isn't totally acceptable as there seems to be little missed by not visiting. I imagine it's similar to Kansas: flat, dry and sparsely populated outside cities. But here's the map.

create your own visited states map

Other fun portland facts

Other fun facts I've learned about portland and Oregon:

Portland houses the worlds smallest Park, Mill Ends Park a wopping 452 square inches big. "The small circle has featured many unusual items through the decades, including a swimming pool for butterflies (complete with diving board) [...] and a miniature ferris wheel (which was delivered by a regular-sized crane)."
Portland has more strip clubs per capita than any other city (I found different numbers, but somewhere in the 8.5 per 100,000 people. I thought Tampa was #1, but some research showed me wrong. I think Tampa has a higher absolute number than any other city though)
Portland has the most brew pubs per capita of any city; and Oregon the most of any state. (wikipedia source)
Largest independant book store in the world (Powell's City of Books has a 1million+ books and the only three-door elevator west of the Mississippi
Oregon has no sales tax (on anything, including cars)
Oregon has no self serve gas, and unlike everywhere else, they don't call it Full Serve mostly, they call it Mini Serve. Although I asked everyone I met there about it and every gas station attendant, no one could provide me an answer (a couple attendants hadn't even noticed that it was called mini serve and not full serve at their own stations!). Apparently "Mini-serve means that the assistant operates the pump but will not clean the windscreen or offer to check the oil." (source and wikipedia link for more info)

There's one thing I haven't mention in my last two glowing entries about Oregon and that's the rain. Not coincidentially it is what I worry is it's biggest downfall. I'm not sure if I could handle things like last years 27+ consecutive days of rain. I'm not sure how Portland's average 155 days of rain a year compares to other places, it seems like a lot. I guess one just has to buy a nice pair of waterproof shoes and gortex coat and just tough it out though.

Oregon is a sweet state

Kitri's got himself an apartment in Eugene, Kara's living the high life two year old Sam in her small hometown of Otis and Troy's doing his thing working and living in Portland. I knew that Euegene wa somewhere that I wanted to seriously look at as a potential place to live and I definitiely liked it lot, but honestly, it's not a city; Eugene is a college town, Portland is a city. With 3-4 times the population, I guess that's what's to be expected. All of Oregon seems to lean towards organic and fresh food from local producers which compliments the aversion to chains. I have a hypothesis: it's all the coffee. (If you've never been in the pacific north west, on every corner there's a drive through espresso place; somebody has to go them

I've dug other cities I've been to on this trip (Minneapolis comes to mind) but nothing quite like this. Surrounding myself with like minded people could either be one of the best or one of the worst decisions I make, or at least best/worst reasons for basing a decision. I'm not sure where the line is between comfort and an echo chamber (even if the echo is faint).

I could go on about things I like about Portland (lots of restaurants with great food, the most brew pubs and strip clubs per capita, reasonable cost of living, public transportation, etc) but it has one thing that so many cities I've been considering lack: industry. Who knows what kind of job I could get, but are definitely options. Dunno, I like Oregon and I like Portland, we'll see.

Housekeeping

So now that I'm back to posting, I'm cleaning some things up on the blog. I've messed with the sidebar and re-enabled recent comments again. Now I'm in the process of cleaning up the templates so they don't suck quite as hard. I apologize for any transitional difficulties. If you have any problems, ideas, suggestions relating to design, comment here. I had flickr integration working at one point, hopefully I can fix that soon.

Eugene OR home of WEP Key Posters

Finally got my way up to Eugene, where my hetro life partner Kitri has decided to settle down. It's nice up here, a little cold perhaps, but crazysexycool outdoors. And lots of bikes! Oh the bikes. Not just in Eugene either. Every couple of miles along the 101 along the coast, another biker. Sometimes with camping gear et all, sometimes with just a backpack on. Similar in way northern Cali too. The rolling hills were at times almost too much for my car to keep up with, I can't imagine how the bikers felt. I even ran across one on a dirt road, in the middle of a wildlife preserve, easily 15miles from anything other than trees and ocean. I spend the better part of a day driving around a couple winding dirt roads that navigated some pretty rough terrain, when I finally decided I'd had enough of it, it took me another hour to get out. By the time I'd gotten out, everything in the car (including inside the trunk!) was covered in a not so thing layer of dust. At every turn I was worried that I'd run into oncoming traffic (passed a total of 4 vehicles travelling the other way in as many hours) as the road was wicked narrow. I can only imagine what that must be like on a bike.

So tonight I'm staying at a hostel in a residential area of Eugene. Quite nice accomidations, comparable in quality and value to staying at a campground in my opinion. Much better on a cold night I'm sure, but nothing quite compares with staying in a redwood grove like I did last night . The wifi and power are more reliable here though. Last night I spent a bunch of time sitting in the car running the laptop off the car battery while catching the campgrounds distant wifi signal. In the tent it was more spotty, but still usable. Here though they have encrypted wireless, with a poster to help you through connecting. I've considered doing something very similar, but always just settled on open mac-controlled, but unencrypted wireless. Hell 64bit WEP is prety close to unencrypted anyways.

Beck at Yahoo Hackday photo roundup

Here's what I consider to be the best of the Beck @ Yahoo hack day photos from Flickr. Perhaps in a few days I weed through the thousands and thousands of photos which don't involve beck. But for now, enjoy!

Rest-o-trip map

Well, I've roughly planned out much of my remaining trip. Don't take the numbered points too seriously some of them are there to trick streets and trips into putting me on the right road. But without further ado, here is roughly the remained of my trip:

Me on CBS 5 (KPIX)

Apparently I was on the local news here in the Bay area. It's not a speaking role, but instead me helping some people set up their tent. I'm on screen for about 3 seconds running around setting poles into their bases. Before that, I watched them stand there with the poles in the tent for like a minute and they had no idea what to do with them (i didn't want to say "the poles bend silly", so I just helped them). My three seconds of fame. Also if you want a brief main-stream introduction to Hack Day, this news segment has it too.

Video Link

Beck at Yahoo in puppet vision

So beck played at the Yahoo hack day last night, that was the "Special Guest" they've been alluding to. During the show, they had some puppeteers making a puppet version of the show as it was going on. They also had made this reel which they played before the encore. Enjoy.

Beck at yahoo hack day

A couple days. I was in Wyoming doing nothing. Now I'm watching beck on the yahoo campus. Unreal. This is why I went on this roadtrip. it's nuts.

Tommorow: Yahoo Open Hack Day

Tonight I'm in San Jose. I'm here for Yahoo! Hack Day. Actually, it's two days. Tomorrow is an all-day developer workshop which will then be followed by 24 hrs of hacking, partying (special guests?!?!) and camping (on the yahoo lawn). I'm excited.

Ketch packets for landmine awareness

When I went to Germany in 2002, I saw all sorts of SMS-centric business models. Whether it was horoscopes, ringtones or erotic-text chat I always thought the SMS charity donation model was pretty cool. Here's a campagin in New Zealand for landmines...you tear the foot/corner off and the blood/ketchup squirts out. Genious. I think more charities in the states should use it, I would donate if it was that easy.

(link from The Food Monkey via BoingBoing
)

Flickr Pictures of the roadtrip

I've posted some pictures to Flickr. I've been organizing them on flickr as I can. I'll be posting some of them here, but in the meantime, check it out yourself:
http://flickr.com/photos/notpeter for all my photos, or
RoadTrip 200 Set or the
Camp O-AT-KA Centenial celebration set. Enjoy. More to come (especially after I get the 4 rolls of film developed).

Contact Pete on the road

I probably should've put this up as soon as I left, but here are the ways to get in contact with me on the road (in order of preference):

SMS/Text: If you know my phone number, text away. If you need it ask a friend or look on Facebook.
Email: my firstnamelastname@gmail.com email is working great. Fire away (it even sort of works on my phone on the road).
Phone: You can give me a call, but good luck. People have reported to me it may take 3-4 attempts to get me, or even my voicemail. If you get a wierd message, hang up and call again. Also to make it worse, I'm often using my phone for internet which should disconnect to take the call, but that seems to work only 30% of the time.
IM: I'll be online at random moments, but I'm off/on a lot because of the limited connectivity. If you add my phone to your AIM, you can text me directly from there too, which works much better (confirmed delivery). If you don't know my AIM, here's the puzzler: name for Moxy Fruvous fans + '98'

Do not use petree --AT@@-- poboxes.com, after 7+ years of service, netforward.com stopped forwarding my emails and doesn't respond to my support requests. Any emails there won't get to me, nor will you get a delivery failure. Update your addressbooks I guess.

Wyoming that wonderful state

I'm currently in Wyoming. I came here because two people explicitly told me not to bother. I wanted to see where all the hatin came from. I understand now I think...and I've only seen the bottom right corner of the state, I can only imagine the northern parts are worse. But anyways, I had planned to stay at a hotel/motel here because I slept car last night...I wanted a clean shower, clean sheets and needed good power to charge up batteries and such (power at campsites is always an unknown until I've already commited to a site). So here I am at a Holiday Inn express...I'd always laughed at the commercials about how after staying here you could be a pilot/surgeon/etc, but it's almost that good. The bed, linens and pillow were excellent...and the tv is placed in a such a way that you can see it perfectly in the mirror while in the bathroom. A handful of other nice things made it almost worth the pricetag (not really), but at least the shampoo/conditioner and soap were quite nice. I had initially planned to go to Boulder today, but Ariel has a conflict, so I may stop by and see her next week on my way back. Oh, and the coffee and wifi in the lobby are both excellent. (Just met a guy who works in Financial services...wow, glad I persued the IT major for a job and not the Econ).

Back again

Awesome. Brainsoup is back up again, it took me a couple hours in a coffee shop in Madison to get it taken care of. But now I should be able to actually post. Yay. Look forward to a lot more postings in the near future.

Zillow.com: Wanna know what your neighbor's house is worth?

Zillow.com is a free site that lets you see estimated prices of residential real estate, including most likely, your house! It's all web 2.0ified and shows you dollar values on a map (satellite hybrid) as well as data from recent appraisals/tax assessments.

Abortion Legality: Indian Reservations a Safe Haven?

Action: North Dakota bans abortion.

Reaction: “To me, it is now a question of sovereignty, [...] I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Now, I know this isn't a solution...in the middle of MS there's the Mississippi Choctaw Indian Reservation (it's the pink spots on this gif or PDF map). A state may have some oversight as to casinos on Indian land, until we have a federal law banning it there's one place in MS where abortions won't be illegal.

Thank you cingular unlimited data

This afternoon, I came home to no cable tv and no cable internet. Well, time warner, you've done it again. But anyways, flash forward 40mins of confirming it is out and we will need to have a repair man come.

Naturally, I did what I do whenever I'm somewhere without internet. I plugged in my bluetooth module and used my cell phone!
My Laptop->[bluetooth]->Phone->[Cingular GPRS/EDGE]->Internet

Other laptop users weren't so lucky though. I had the only internet connect.
So I unplugged my router (wired only) and left my Wireless Access Point running; turned on Windows Internet Connection Sharing and bam!:
Roommates laptop->[Wifi]->Access Point->[Wifi]->My Laptop->[bluetooth]->Phone->[Cingular GPRS/EDGE]->Internet

The connection is limited (less than 112Kbit/sec...~14KBytes/sec), but it totally works. If I had a GSM Class 10 device, I could simultaneously make voice calls, but for the moment I can live with just the internet

Now I just want a box that does this. A bluetooth/wifi router. Hell it shouldn't be that expensive, i wonder if i could do it myself...

Beastie Boys: Awesome; I Fuckin Shot That!

Short interview with Adam Yauch (Beastie Boys) on Wired about the forthcoming Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!. A concert video where they gave fans 50 Hi8 Cameras. The trailer looks pretty sweet.

Phpbb BBCode for Youtube videos

So my brother threw together something pretty neat for his message boards (aka IBC).

He wrote a phpbb module to embed YouTube videos into PHPBB with BBCode

Phpbb posters can easily embed YouTube videos with the YouTube player. Quite nifty, if you ask me. Allows you to safely allowing embeding of video content (which won't autoplay).

All it takes is: [youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=5rHp_5vSZ5w[/youtube]
Tasty.

Youtube Video BBCode page on phpbb.com or direct download from phpbb.com.

White Flour!

Pillsbury Doughboy Nazi. Mmm...white flour.
Best t-shirt, ever. I've got a birthday coming up. (from mike)

Mmmm...Nitrous (Laughing Gas)

I've never done nitrous, but in case you ever wanted to, here's instructions how to make nitrous oxide (laughing gas) at home thanks to boingboing.

Pickle Ball Rocks

When I was in high school, we used to spend the winter months in gym class playing a game called Pickle Ball. It's quite fun, I always thought of it as ping pong, but bigger. For the uninitiated, the game is played with a flat wooden paddle and you hit a wiffle ball back and forth over a net. You can only score on serve. But anyways, Friday's All Things Considered on NPR had a story about it. Apparently it's taking off as a sport for old people, and their trying to get it as an event in the senior olympics. Play it if you get a chance, it's all sorts of fun.

Guster - Two Points for Honesty

I recently rediscovered guster's Two Points For Honesty.
What follows is lame emo song lyric posting.

Continue reading "Guster - Two Points for Honesty"

Funky Buildings

Wow, those are some cool buildings.

(link from Geisha Asobi Blog)

Dick Cheney's got a Gun

This is just stupid pass around to your co-worker shit, but it's still funny. A flash parody of 'Janie's got a gun' by Aerosmith...Cheney's Got A Gun. (local mirror)

(from John via Email)

Dave Chappelle's Block Party

New trailer up on apple's quicktime trailer site, Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Looks pretty funny. Coming out marche 3rd.

French Fry Encrusted Hot Dogs

Take a hot dog. Encase it in cornbread. Cover it in french fries and then slather it with ketchup and mustard. It's a whole meal on a stick. This pic is from South Korea.
(via BoingBoing)

Firefox auto-update: it just worked

Well, it's look like the Firefox team finally got auto-updating working right. I had heard that 1.5 had improved auto-update, but not until today did I see it in action. It happened the way it should with the release of 1.5.0.1 today. It downloaded in the background, prompted me to install/upgrade, closed all tab/windows, updated and restarted the browser. All in under a minute. Opera software, are you listening? I heart you opera, where's the auto update. I'm sure it's hard to do securely, but yah know. Just do it?

Dunkin Donuts...don't dunk donuts in coffee

I've seen people dunk donuts in coffee, i think even on a Dunkin Donuts ad.

Don't do it. It's gross.

That is all.

Way to get some reverse cowgirl Mr. panda!

More panda photos

Clerrks 2: Teaser Trailer

It's just a teaser trailer, random scenes with a heavy metal soundtrack. Enjoy the Clerks 2 Teaser Trailer

So you wanna learn binary?

In the last week, I've had two discussions about understanding binary with my intelligent, but non computer scientist, friends. I've understood binary intuitively since we covered numeric "bases" when I was in fifth grade. My friend Cameron was supposedly able to teach it to a couple of friends so that they understood in an a relatively short period of time. I once tried to teach it a friend binary and hexidecimel with mild sucess. I'm not sure what it is that causes people to have trouble with it (maybe it's cause we have 10 fingers and toes instead of 16), but I think it's something that is reasonably important for people to understand, just so they can have an elementary understanding of how computers keep track of the information they store. I think that the more people understand the (even small) parts of how the "magic" that makes computer work, the less technophobic and more empowered people will be. In a shining moment of my (short) teaching casreer, I tought a handful of high school students Binary, Octal and Hexidecimel...and some of them actually understood. If only for an hour.

But this leads me to someone teaching binary with the socratic method to 3rd graders and having it work. Way cool. By reading the transcript, maybe you can learn too!

Freestyle Walking

Video of some sweet freestyle walking and general acrobatics. If only I could walk like this.

Starbucks rant: no plates

I'm not too hungry this early in the day, so I decided to take my lunch break and get some coffee at starbucks. (Sidenote: starbucks, which is 10minutes away, is the closest cafe of any sort where I can sit down and not feel rushed...the dunkin donuts across the street doesn't count) Besides the overwhelming feeling of disconnectedness from everyone else here (suburbia at its finest) they don't have plates. Yep.

I ordered coffee cake.
They put it in a bag. (even though the coffee I got was for here...which they also gave me in a paper cup)
I asked for a plate.
They said they didn't have plates and offered me a plastic box instead.
Oy!

This is the last West Wing season

Well, it's been a good seven season run, but come may, NBC is cancelling The West Wing. Apparently this had nothing to do with Leo (John Spencer) dying. I had heard that this season would see some guest appearances by Sam (Rob Lowe) but they haven't happened yet. I wonder if those got axed too. We've cross the halfway mark (last night was episode 12 of the season out of a normal 22 or 23) but hopefully come next fall, Commander in Chief won't be the only presidential show on television. Mackenziewatch.com? Come on ABC, you could've done better than that.

Note to self: get a smaller laptop

Currently I have the most unsexy laptop in the world. Unless to you BIG == sexy (we won't take that analogy any further). It's a nice laptop in terms of features a power. 2.0Ghz Pentium M, 1GB ram a 100GB HD, a cdrw/dvd and internal wireless. But there's this one problem. It has a 17" screen. Actually, that itself isn't the main problem (1920x1200 is a lot of screen real eastate and I like it most the time) it's the fact that to fit a 17" inch screen, you're laptop ends up being huge and weighing a ton. Both things that detract from it's portability and flexibility. My oh-so-lovely four year old Thinkpad T21 (14" screen) was (is?) the ultimate bring along machine. The keyboard was the right size (this one sucks) the touchPoint (red mouse replacement nipple in the middle of the keyboard) never gets confused like touchpads do, and it made me anonymous IBM Thinkpad user. There are a decent number of thinkpad users floating around because both Wake and UNC issue them to students and faculty. But apparently this laptop is a beacon telling people that I'm a nerd and care about computer hardware.

So I was sitting on the couch at the Green Bean minding my own, when some guy asks me: "Is that a Pentium IV?" Yep. That's an opener if I've ever seen one. I responded hesitantly, "umm...yeah"...he quickly noticed that in fact my computer was a Pentium M and then proceeded to go on a rampage. He started telling me about how he used to have a P4, but then he got this repalcement (pointing disapointedly) which was a sempron (followed by a sidebar about how he hated the sempron). [This may be geek speak. I understand it, but it doesn't interest me. I don't engage in conversation loudly at a public cafe about it. Maybe with Todd at 1 in the morning while geeking out just bullshitting] But then came the big news: he had just ordered a super pimp laptop. And then came the specs. Blah blah processor, blah blah "4gigs of ram stock upgradable to 8" blah blah "230 gigs hard drive" blah blah "17inch wide screen HD display" blah blah. Sigh. First, I don't care. Second, I don't know you. And third, who the fuck calls any computer display "HD". (Answer: No one who understand what HD is...my laptop is higher res than the highest HD tv (1200lines vs. 1080 in 1080i/1080p.)

And then came the kicker: "My friends call it the transvestite. Cause it has all parts."

Needless to say, our conversation, which I had only contributed maybe 10 words to, was over.

In any communication, assume a customer is seeing or hearing it. If we all abide by that rule, no one will get in trouble

Email from my boss.:

In any communication, assume a customer is seeing or hearing it. If we all abide by that rule, no one will get in trouble.

This was in reference to a discussion about making some of our case histories customer accessible.

Wow. In any communication? I write excellent case summaries, always under the assumption that someone might be reading them, so I'm not worried about this issue at all. We are a geographically spread out company with employees working in from Florida to Canada. Electronic communication (email/IM) is often the only way we communicate. The problem with that statement though, is that sometimes, you need to say things that the customer wouldn't want to hear. And often times, this is in the customers best interest. I guess we can all spend our lives making sure all our communication for pubic consumption using jargon and technical terms to dance around what actually happened...or we could just use a little judgement. And sorry boss man, I'm still going to IM between my coworkers and speak openly customer issues. It's hard for people to communicate and keep up to date on things as is, the last thing I need is worry that any intra office communication (which I would assume would be included in "any communication") is assumed to be heard by the customer.

If we all abide by that rule, no one will know what's going on.

50 dildo vibrator

Apparently Get Rich or Die Trying was popular enough that 50 cent thinks it's time to branch out. To making a dildo.

50 tells GQ magazine:

"I need to make a 50 Cent condom, and a motorized version of me.A motorized version of me will definitely have to be waterproof, so you could utilize it in the tub. A lot of them (vibrators) aren't waterproof. Blue is my favorite color, so it would probably be blue. But I don't know how big. I don't know if big is better because I'm not sure a man wants his woman playing with a really big dildo. But I want to do something like that, to create something that's popular and exciting sexually for women."

One has to wonder though. How anatomically correct would he want this to be? Probably just 10-15% larger than the real thing to make him feel manly. Although somehow seeing a version of one's own penis, but larger...that might be a little too much for me. "Ooo look, it's my penis...no not the big one."

(From the village voice)

Hack an iTrip into your PSP, with software radio control too

I've seen the iTrip interface on the iPod, it's pretty straightforward...in fact, I always thought it a little inelegant and kludgy. You tune your stereo to a blank spot and then the iPod just lets you select from any FM station to broadcast the iTrip on. But not having the device I wondered...how's it do that? I always assumed that it did it through the dock connector and through some private arrangement with apple they got to get some software to run. Wow, someone (either Griffen or Apple) was smart. They made it so that the control happened by listening for something in the audio stream.

For real people: It plays an MP3 and based on the sound in that MP3 it changes stations. So simple. Why didn't i think of it. No complicated software...just a couple of MP3 files linked to from the root menu of the ipod. So when this guy decided to embed an itrip into his psp he was able to fully control it through software without needing to leave anything hangingou of the oh so pretty looking PSP. Oh gadget lust. Modded gadget lust at that.

If anyone feels like they owe me something...like maybe I've been nice to you in the past...or felt I didn't have enough toys...I would certainly not turn down a Sony PSP and a big ass memory stick. I've got some interesting ideas about media management... how to manage your ever increasing larger picture, audio, video and document library across heterogenous playback and storage devices...
Continue reading "Hack an iTrip into your PSP, with software radio control too"

Betting on television

Bravo has Celebrity Poker Showdown, Travel/Discovery has World Poker Tour and ESPN2 has the World Series of Poker. All of which are, literally betting on television. But what if you want to bet on the outcome of a television show, not just observe others better? Bodog has betting on "non-sports" events. Although one might be tempted to bet on "What will Apple unveil at its press event on October 12th?", I'm more amused by the fact that you can bet on the outcome of America's next top model, Survivor (they're still on?), both Apprentices (Martha and Donald) or on the success of celebrity couples and/or the sex of their children.

The best wager of all though?

"Will Oprah Winfrey announce that she has converted to Scientology before December 31, 2005?"

Red rope licorice, bathroom style

Some questions:

Who brings red rope in with them to take a shit?
Who hangs it up on the stall door?
Who leaves it there?

I guess #3 is the natural consequence of #1 and #2, but it's still a wierd.

Power Meter (Kill a Watt)

Academic: "I need to quantify resource usage in an attempt to better understand my consumption, allowing for me to efficiently allocate resources."

Layman: "I wanna know how much power (and thus money) it takes to run something."

Apparently there is a device called the Kill-A-Watt which does exactly what I want. Cyberguys has it for $29.95 + 3.45 shipping...you can order it direct from cyberguys or from cyberguys via amazon. Maybe I'll ask for it for xmas...october's not to early to do that, right? And $34.30 is reasonable...

Pinhole lunar eclipse photography

Wow. pinhole eclipse photography at its best.

(Link straight up stolen from BoingBoing who got it from John Parres)

Voicing Terrible Music Opinions

When I saw this, I immediately thought of my friend Cam.

Napoleon Dynamite ads for Utah State Fair

Napoleon Dynamite ads for Utah State Fair.

Killer dolphins

Holy dolphin...the U.S. military may have lost some doplphins trained and equipped with toxic darts after Katrina. That may require some fruther investigation but...

"Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing."

Opera is 10 years old

Wow. I've been using Opera for a long ass time. I first started seriously using Opera in like 1997 or so as Netscape stopped really updating its browser for Windows 3.11. Yes, I was still running Windows 3.11 for a long ass time, I dabbled in NT 3.51 which was nice, but yah know. Anyways, Opera was my browser of choice then because it wasn't a resource hog and was rather intuitive (it was an MDI app before anyone called it tabbed browsing). Anyways, I'll cut to the chase:

Opera is 10 today. They are having a party and they are giving away free opera licenses while the party is going on. Yes, free Opera licenses. Enjoy.

Sigh, I'm wearing pants.

Some other amusing venn diagrams.

Hygenia the new buzzword to describe marketing buzzwords

I find it difficult to read an article where 33 times they describe trends using the word Hygenia. Wow, this article is all about Hygenia, how could I never have heard of it before? What is hygenia you might ask? Well...

"So welcome to HYGIENIA*: a marketplace inhabited by mature consumers from South Korea to Brazil, from Australia to Canada, who can instantly and expertly point out the various hygiene factors for each and every good, service and experience on offer. They base their knowledge on many years of self-training in hyper-consumption, and on the now almost biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources and filters helping them to track down the Best of the Best, the Cheapest of the Cheapest, the First of the First."

About as clear as mud. At least they have a little humor about trying to put a buzzword these trends...

"*And about the name: it might not be pretty, but it should be sticky."

Yes, they too are trying to create branding in their newletter about branding. Suprise suprise.

Anyways, laugh it up at TrendWatching.com's newsletter about the Hygenia trend. If someone comes up with a better definition, please let me know.

Contagious laughter

I just called a customer and their receptionist picked up the phone, laughed a little bit and laughingly let out a greeting. I couldn't help but laugh. And even while I was being transferred I was laughing a little bit. I didn't hear a joke, but I'm always looking for an excuse to start laughing.

New brainsoup features

I'm going to add two new things to brainsoup in the near future that I've been meaning to add for a while. First off, I'd like to create a link blog (ala Waxy Links) as a place to put links to interesting things that don't justify a whole blog entry (with a seperate xml feed so if you only want full entries you can get that) and also a media-I've-consumed thing. Like for books I've read or music I've been listening to. I may just call the link blog Brainsoup Links, but still need something for the books/music stuff. I just came up with Brainsumer (brainsoup + consumer) i dunno though. The domains are available and I could then expand it to product reviews too. Anyone have ideas for either?

Oh and btw, I fixed the brainsoup.duckies.org syndication links so livejournal users will get a nice flood of posts. Or I wish they got flooded, instead they'll just get splashed since I've only posted a few times in the last couple weeks.

Easthampton, Alabama

Yep. That's Easthampton, and those are pictures of Alabama state highway signs.
(link from fark)

Durex Bananana Condom Ad and more

This is one of a hundred or so durex condom ads. This guy also has another collection of subtly erotic ads worth taking a look at.

Brainsoup fixed

Mike fixed it. Thanks mike.

Brainsoup broken

I don't want to talk about it. But serendipity seems to be broken. I can't login. I put this (and the last entry) directly into the database. Well, it's just something more to fool with later on. As if there weren't enough hurdles to me posting regularly...

Oh Snap! Aim Fight Bitches

From AOL, AIM Fight!. Social networking popularity contest with a network that is entirely social (unlike say Orkut or Friendster which are just a popularity contests to begin with. Yeah, I know MySpace has more members than either Orkut or Friendster, but it's a serious player, not just a joke like the other three...or at least News Corp thought it was worth $580 Million in cash.

UPDATE: Awesome comic on the MySpace sale to fox.

How to move a hippo

Advice from the US Postal Service on how to move a hippo.

3. Hold it, hold it - put the hippo in the tank, first. Start with soothing hippo music, followed by a large winch and crane.

Busybusybusy

I've been really busy as of late. Work takes up lots of my time and I've had some a foreign visitor for the last week. Combine that with the hours and money I spent on getting the server reinstalled (~10hrs and $70). Sigh. I've not been getting as much work done as I should (things slip through) and I've been scrambling to keep up with all my friends. I feel like I'm neglecting everyone. This weekend will be low-key hopefully, we'll see.

Just an update to let you know that I'm doing fine, having a great time day-to-day and staying busy. But back to work, I've got things to do. I'll try to post more, I have a bunch of older stuff I'd like to put up.

Nasa pictures of the year from Cassini

15,000 words and a link to nasa's Cassini-Huygens Cassinni Photo Contest from /.

$100 for buying a crappy IBM 75GXP

So in the fall of 2001 I built a computer for my mom (which my little brother annexed) and I bought many of the parts from NewEgg. One of those parts was an IBM Deskstar 75GXP 60gig hard drive...which while it worked, was a nice fast drive. Too bad it broke after less than a month. After finding out that these drives had a high failure rate, I just bought another 60gig drive, this time a Maxtor which I knew would work forever. I RMA'd the drive and after spending a bunch of money on shipping and waiting over a week I got a new 60GXP, which apparently had a lower failure rate. Not low enough for me. That died within three months too. I finally got another replacement just this past summer (what's the purpose of a drive you know will just die again) and it's been running fine ever since. Although I've never heard them come out and say it, soon after the fiasco around this drive, IBM stopped making hard drives. They sold the division to Hitachi and washed there hands of the whole thing. I had decided it was just a bad purchase and I would move on from it until...I read a SlashDot SlashBack where they mentioned that there was a class action lawsuit against IBM for this.

So now, because I bought this crappy drive and because NewEgg is awesome enough to keep historic invoices, I'm going to get a check for $100. I only paid $125 for anyways. Sweet.

Magnetic Bottle Opener

In my old apartment, I mounted a bottle opener on the wall (like the ones they have at a bar) that I had gotten at the wonderful Kittredge Kitchen Equipment. If I remember correctly it was $2.50 including screws...I certainly got my money's worth. But when I moved to my new apartment, I didn't bother to take it off the wall. Ever since it's always been a little bit of a hassle to find a bottle opener...maybe not hassle, but an opener sitting on the counter just isn't as cool as an opener mounted under the counter. So today I found a solution to this problem...the magnetic bottle opener. Yeah $33 is a little steep compared to $2.50, but leaving behind holes in the wall isn't always the best idea.

link from UberReview via LifeHacker via Gizmodo.

Canada Same Sex Marriage Legal

Following in the footsteps of my home state, Canada has legalized same sex marriage. Rock on.

IIS and Apache on the same server

One might think that it would be relatively easy to get two different web servers running on the same server at the same time...as long as each had their own IP address, this should be straight forward...right. With IIS involved it's anything but simple.

I was doing this with Apache Tomcat, but the same information applies to any webserver running alongside IIS.

Stop IIS and Apache/Tomcat
Get the non-IIS server setup to only bind to one IP address. Instructions for Apache Tomcat are painless. (instructions for apache 1.3 or apache 2.0)
Start Apache
Check to see if it is binding correctly (run 'netstat -a -n' and make sure you don't see any 0.0.0.0:80...and just 192.168.1.1:80 or whatever you specified.)
Install the Windows Server 2003 Support Tools. They are on your 2k3 disc in the \SUPPORT\TOOLS directory or just download them from MS
Make totally sure IIS is stopped: run 'net stop http /y'
Run 'httpcfg set iplisten -i 192.168.1.253' for adding each ip address you would like IIS to actually use.
Double check to make sure it's only listening on the correct IP addresses...run 'httpcfg query iplisten'.
Restart IIS ('net start w3svc')

That's it. Wasn't that simple? Wouldn't it be nice if MS gave you a better error message other than "The process cannot access the file because it is in use by another process." Bitches.

Edit: 6/16/2005 8:24AM - Make sure you shutdown the services using the command-line, because using the graphical services snap will not necessarily work. No, I'm not kidding. For real. Microsoft's response to this over-zealous IP gobbling behavior? "This behavior is by design." Nice.

Info gathered from MS Article 813368 and this devarticles thread.

Serendipity's search is case sensitive

I'm using serendipity for this blog. I just tried to search for windows xp, but got no results. I knew I had an entry from back in the day called Windows XP Sucks Balls, but where was it? After some fiddling, I figured out that the search functionality is case sensitive, so if I search for Windows XP I get 10 results instead. Gotta fix that.

Doll creepy

I don't know if I can describe this very well. It's just disturbing. Someone made stop-motion of a doll who you can get to do different things by clicking on objects. Yeah. I don't want to spoil the suprise, but it can be creepy.

Cool, this guy Nick Veasey does X-Ray photography. I like it a lot. I've always been intruiged by the 3-D x-rays that they do at the airport that are all colored and the like...this guy is making art/ad campaigns by taking cool x-ray shots. Sweet.

Geek's are better lovers

The New York Daily News is running an article titled Nerds make better lovers. I don't think I need much of a write up here, just rehashing what I've been noticing over the course of the last couple years. Being geeky is now in style, but unlike Capri pants or <insert obscure passe fashion reference here> (real) geeks aren't just doing it to be cool. We really do like wearing Capri pants...I mean playing with computers. Damn it...blew my cover again.

3d Infamous Worm Game

First there was The Infamous Worm Game (SFCave).
Then came Necro SFCave, a two player version of the same game.
After that there was Snake Jump and 3D Snake Jump, games that were similar, but quite different and less addicting.

But now, there is a First person Infamous Worm Came. It's 3D, but really, just like the old game, you control one dimension (up/down) while the game just scrolls along. It's cool, almost as addicting as the original, but somehow looking down a tunnel is less visually pleasing than seeing a scrolling board go by.

It's official, mainers are nuts.

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- The state House of Representatives Tuesday morning gave its final approval to legislation to give the beverage that special honor. Moxie is closely identified with Maine, where an annual festival and parade are held in its honor. It's bottled in New Hampshire for distribution in northern New England. While it's considered a New England beverage, Moxie is owned by an Atlanta company. The bill initially sought to make Moxie Maine's official beverage, but was amended to make it the state's official soft drink.

I first started drinking it while I spent my summer's in Maine at camp, and have gone down the Kennebec river with Moxie Outdoor Adventures. Think about how rafting guides are always a little nuts? Not just focus some of that crazy energy towards Moxie. But Moxie's been around for a long time, apparently Calvin Coolidge had a thing for Moxie, and as it turns out, Bush can't escape the moxie either.

(from WLBZ-NBC 2, Convenience Store News and Maine's Senator Olympia Snow)

Hold Music: National Alert System

While waiting on hold with a customer today, my country on-hold music was rudely interrupted by a testing of the National Weather Service's storm alert testing thingie. It was a little wierd hearing it on the phone...the tests are annoying, but I was always kind of wanted to know who was getting messed up by bad weather. Without the weather channel, I don't get much of that now.

Bush Fish

You gotta be kidding, these people are serious: That really is a fish that has bush inside of it instead of jesus.

UK phone-wiring workshop with Laura

So, I bought a VoIP box from Lingo to use over here in England, but alas, it was mysteriously not working...had a lovely set of conversations with the Warwick University IT people before I discovered that it was probably the phone that was the problem. So, when I got up today, I looked up a diagram of US/UK phone wiring (to be fair, Pete had sort of told me about this earlier, but I was too frustrated to pay much attention). A few slices of the Xacto knife (and a few pieces of electrical tape) later, and I have a semi-functional phone (which I stole from the kitchen of my flat...hopefully the other 7 people haven't missed it).

Basically I had to expose the inner 2 wires on the US phone cord and tape them into place against the outer 2 contacts inside the UK phone. I had to dial upside down because I was scared to turn the phone around for fear of moving the wires.

Since then I have rigged up a (slightly) less shoddy construction (on the right here) which involved taping the outer wires from yet another phone cord (Lingo sent me 3) to the inner wires which were formerly rammed inside the phone:

I am quite proud of myself. Now I just have to remember to put the phone back in the kitchen before I go to sleep.

Paris 0wns Hanity and Colmes

Apparently Paris (a rapper) put Hanity and Colmes in their place. I haven't seen the video of it yet, but if the transcript is any indication, this should totally be on the daily show.

Bacon Band AIds, awesome

Archie McPhee is selling bacon band-aids. I think one of these would look really cool over my arm wounds, especially because it wouldn't cover it all so it would just be like I had bacon on my arm.

(from Red Ferret Journal via BoingBoing)

crinoline: Word of the Day

crinoline, the poofy stuff under fancy dresses.
m-w and reference.com definitions. Who knew there was word for it? No I, but Jo did.

Gmail: Opera Works

The full non-lite version Gmail works in Opera 8. I was using Opera for everything except Gmail, and just using FireFox for that. Now I don't need to do that, Opera for everything!

Valium Pictures

Stumbling around on WebMD I came across something kinda cool, they have pictures of what real Valium look like.

Aren't they cute? WedMD also has pictures of other famous drugs: OxyContin, Viagra, Ritalin and Adderall and Ambien. I wish I could view WebMD pill images flickr style.

Royals on Pizza

"Pizza Express, a UK pizza chain, shares its birthday with the Queen. To commemorate its 40th, it has released a series of pizzas bearing portaits of the Royals spelled out in toppings."
(link from BoingBoing)

Car Accident

I got into a car accident yesterday. I was at fault. I totalled my car. I don't really feel like retelling how I got into it, but I was alone in the car and no one else was hurt except me. I got a little scratched up by some broken glass, but am otherwise fine. I took today off work, but will go back tomorrow. Big thanks to ames for getting me at the hospital and for offering me the use of her car until I figure out what I'm going to do vehicle wise. Bill and Jo were sweet enough to bring me some Ice Cream last night, yum. Today I feel pretty good, still sore, but I've been trying to be active and not just sit around.

Quote from the training manual

"MSN Instant Messenger is the preferred instant messaging client for MTI staff."
Yep, when I sat down at my new computer on the first day, the first thing I did (not even thinking about it) was close MSN messenger and open up the registry so it wouldn't run on startup. Just as my boss was telling me he had signed me up for an MSN IM account. Step 2? Download trillian.

Arbys: Where a sandwich is an appetizer

So I had lunch at the Arby's across the street from work (alone...please visit me! But anyways, on my placemat it said the following:

"There's one simple reason I love this place...I love that I can open my calassic Arby's Beef 'n Cheddar sandwich and put off devouring this roasted and extra-thinly sliced perfection just long enough to scoop that melted cheese off the wrapper and enjoy this incredible appetizer among friends."

Yep, Arby's considers a 440 Calorie, 21 grams of fat sandwich an appetizer. To fully round out the humor, my cup had this on it:

Why wash your Arby's down with a cold beverage? You could try washing your sandwich down with another sandwich. But a sandwich could be hard to fit in a cup and even harder to sip through a straw.

Yep, there's no better way to segway between your appetizer sandwich and your real meal, but with a 200 calorie coke.

Lunch in Winston-Salem

Now that I have this job like-type-thing, I apparently get an hour for lunch everyday. This means that I will have the oppertunity for lunch dates. If you work in Winston or are going to be in Winston for lunch time, by all means give me a call, I'd love people to eat with. Being as I don't really know anyone in Winston, almost all of my lunches will likely be eaten alone...please change that! But anyways, this is shameless self promotion, but seriously though:

I WANT TO EAT LUNCH WITH YOU! (finger point out of screen at you!)

New Job: Melton Technologies

Hey, just so everyone knows, I finally got a new job. I will be working at Melton Technologies doing tech support type stuff. The company is a small privately own software company located in Winston-Salem that makes software for managing fleets of trucks. They have a number of modules that each handle different aspects of the business (vehicle maintainence, paying drivers, tracking locations, accounting, etc). I don't really understand much at this point, but I hope to pick up more as time goes on. Although the job is initially in support, I will likely move into development once I understand the product and have had some experience supporting it. We'll see though. Now I have job, which is definately a good thing.

Always Use Protection: Get Firefox

Although I've always been more of an Opera kid, their promo pics aren't nearly as cool as this:

(from bicostal disorder via VooDoo Knickers

Does TV make you dumb

The NYTimes is running an article about television requiring more intelligence and becoming more complex with specific mention to 24. Of which I am an admitted addict. Multi-threaded plot-lines being also prevelant in other shows like West Wing, E.R. and The Sopranos. It's an interesting read, especially, especially given that it's got the crowd pleasing title: Watching TV Makes You Smarter.

But nothing, and I mean nothing makes me assume an article is all truth like graphs where "The vertical axis represents the number of individual threads, and the horizontal axis is time." like so:

Wow. Graphs.

"Steven Johnson is the author, most recently, of ''Mind Wide Open.'' His book ''Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter,'' from which this article is adapted, will be published next month."

4.47 of people living in MA have livejournals

Livejournal is huge. Fucking huge. According to the Livejournal statistics and raw stats pages, there are 6.86m accounts of which 2.66m are active in some way. 1.53m of those updated in the last 30 days. Holy shit.

There's also some other statistics that livejournal has put up. They look at the number of Livejournal accounts who specify each state as their location and then divide by that state's population. Here's the lines I care about from it:

STATES      LJ Accts	Population   % of pop w/ LJ acct
Mass.       276009      6175000      4.47%
Michigan    381845      9863000      3.87%
Florida     508773      15111000     3.37%
Washington  189316      5756000      3.29%
New Jersey  232755      8143000      2.86%
Arizona     131201      4778000      2.75%
New York    476129      18196000     2.62%
Virginia    174817      6872000      2.54%
California  823208      33145000     2.48%
Penn.       263420      12000000     2.20%
Georgia     147176      7788000      1.89%
Illinois    214786      12128000     1.77%
Ohio        196924      11256000     1.75%
Texas       346614      20044000     1.73%
N.Carolina  129291      7650000      1.69%

As many people have guessed on their blogs, this is likely due to the large number of colleges/universities in MA. I think that this number is likely further inflated by people listing their current location as where they go to school, but not where they claim residency. Either way, that's a lot of accounts.

Futurama's Bender on The Simpsons

I don't have a screen cap yet, but Bender from Futurama was just on the simpsons. This ep (s16e15 GABF12) is titled Future-Drama. Nice play on words...and I encourage any excuse to give Futurama characters a little more life. I'll do a screen grab later tonight.

TVTome Link.

China labor shortage?

I know this ins't the end of the China driven economy, but the New York Times is reporting that China is seeing the beginning to see some of the results of their population control policy...a little bit of a labor shortage.

I don't have the mental capacity to come up with some in-depth analysis, but one could if you were so inclined.

RIP Frank Perdue

Frank Perdue of Perdue chicken died at 84.
(link from POENews)

P.S. Oh yeah, in case you live under a rock, the Pope died too

Homestarruner wiki

I'm sure most people out there have heard of Strong Bad Email before. If you've been living under a rock, it's a web flash cartoon that doesn't suck. They've been doing it for a few years now and so they've built up quite an archive of toons. In most (all?) of the cartoons, there are little easter eggs...for example, if you click on something at the end of the cartoon you are treated to a little bit more animation, a song, etc. But some people put up a Homestar Runner Wiki. It has information about every strongbad episode. Including transcripts, lengths, easter eggs, fun facts/references as well as information about the DVD versions (differences, bonuses, etc). Check it out if you like strong bad. Really, I'm sure there'll be dozens of easter eggs you probably missed.

World Beard and Moustache Championships

The World Beard and Moustache Championships is going on this fall in Berlin, make sure not to miss it. Yeah. Wowzas.
(link from BoingBoing)

NCAA Basketball

I've never really been a fan of sports in general, but I have a soft spot for college basketball. I usually catch a of couple games in the first few rounds and as the bracket gets smaller I see more and more. This year was no exception, I watched all four games in the Elite Eight. College ball, especially in the post season, is incredibly competetive. Every game ends up being really exciting. I know nothing about any of the teams I watched play (except what mindless dribble from the announcers happened to trickle through into my brain) but wow, they sure did keep it interesting. All four games went into overtime. I hope the final four is as interesting as this was.

Windows Media Player Error: Catastrophic failure

I tried to play an avi file and this is the error message I got:

Windows Media Player Error: Catastrophic failure.
Catastrophic failure. (Error=8000FFFF)
Ahhhhhh....there's been a catastrophe! Windows media player crashed! Again!
For those curious (no one) it was in the old windows media player 6.4 (mplayer2.exe).

Minnesota teen posted bloody Flash film late last year

"The Minnesota teenager responsible for Monday's high school shooting spree last year created a violent, blood-soaked video that included an animated character shooting four people and blowing up a police car before committing suicide"

The Smoking Gun is carrying the story, but I got the link from waxy who got it from Nelson's Linkblog

RescueCom

I applied to a freelance consulting position on Monster the other day and got a response back. The company is RescueCom. They had a contract specifiying how I would be paid for contract jobs and wanted a bunch of information from me. I was initially very skeptical and decided to do a little research and found out a couple things about them.

RescueCOM sued google this past fall.
Their website is in flash and has music. Lame.
They are franchise based (weird)

After chatting on the phone with them for a little while and obtaining addresses/name verification I am less nervous. Oh and google brought up this Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce newsletter about a new Rescuecom office opening with a picture. Eh, maybe they aren't as sketchy as I thought, just different.

BoingBoing links to five year old video

Top of BoingBoing right now: a link to a video with a laughing Tigger and tickle me Elmo toys having sex. I knew I'd seen this before, so I looked back at some of my old videos. Sure enough there it was, dated February 21, 2000. It's not any sort of hard proof, but I still find it funny how things on the internet come back again and again and will never die.

Nokia 6820 Message limits

I have a nifty Nokia 6820. I like for many things, but last night something happened that was uncool. Apparently the way things are setup, the phone stores text messages (SMS) on the SIM card. Last night it ran out of space on the SIM card. I don't really have a problem with this, except with the way it informed me. It told me (after a new message had been recieved) that I was running low of message space. So I quickly went and deleted 10 or so messages that I didn't care about, imagining that would be enough. I sent a few messages back and forth and then said goodnight. After that I didn't get any more text messages. So I thought nothing of it. Of course, I had passed the magic full line and it never told me.

So this morning I downloaded and setup the Nokia PC Suite software so I could backup my messages, photos and contacts. I sucessfully got it setup so that the phone and the computer could chat over bluetooth and cleaned up my phone. I moved all the texts and photos off the phone and onto the computer. About 10 minutes later i got two more text messages from last night. It was the other half of the end of the conversation last night. So I have to ask the question, I had multiple megabytes free on the non-sim card memory on my phone, why can't it automatically move the messages out of my inbox (sim) to the archive (memory). Or at the very least inform me (at regular intervals?) that my inbox is full and thus I cannot receive anymore messages.

Post no bills

from Voodoo Knickers (formerly RadioActive Anti-Matter)

WWDD? What Would Devo Do?

Recently I've run into a couple of friends who like Devo. Aaron Varnum, I don't think you read Brainsoup, but this is for you. I'm not sure I have enough Devo interest to pimp this shirt, but man it's cool.

And at only $12, it's a steal.

link from Preshrunk

Always wait 30 minutes to go swimming after you eat.

Heard over the PA at Panera:

"Always wait 30 minutes to go swimming after you eat."

That is all.

Make firefox launch PDFs in Acrobat, not a plugin

Opera is my browser of choice. It has been ever since around 1997 or so when I first used it because it was a browser that had a small memory footprint. It was much nicer than IE to use on our old computer, from then I was hooked. One thing that opera does by default is that it launches PDFs in Acrobat rather than as a plugin on a webpage. In IE and Mozilla/Firefox when you open a PDF it opens in as if it were the webpage. This seems like a great idea, and is nice for integration with sites that can be PDF heavy like US Patent & Tradmark Office or Proquest. But as anyone who's at all serious about research knows, it's really easy to loose track of internet sources...so personally I like to save PDFs whenever possible. PDFs are also often not quite optimized for viewing onscreen. They are usually at some level page images meaning that the more screen real estate you can give to them, the more useful they become (try scanning a PDF for something you want with a small window, it's hard as fuck).

So I like my PDF documents to open in a dedicated, seperate, maximized window. Call me old fashioned, but why waste screen real estate showing me the Mozilla/IE toolbar when they don't help me read the PDF. Anyways, my friend doug bitched about losing some work in firefox because Acrobat crashed. This prompted me to find a solution and here it is:
Continue reading "Make firefox launch PDFs in Acrobat, not a plugin"

Peter's map

So I went to look up information about my Nokia 6820 (the one with the keyboard) and what programs I can use to sync it. (If I had a mac I could use iSync, I know...), but I got distracted. The map on nokia's country selection page is not just a mercator projection, it's some better attempt at equal area...

In my head I thought: "Why didn't they use a peter's projection?" I couldn't think of any good reason, so I thought maybe Peter's projection is copyrighted? Naturally i googled a little bit, but what was the first page dedicated to it? A site where you can buy Peter's projection maps.

A couple seasons back there was an episode of the west wing in which there was an argument against the mercator projection by a small fringe group (it was big block of cheese day again). I found the whole thing amusing, because I can't remember when I first saw a Peter's projection because I'm pretty sure I was introduced to it while I was in elementary school...it's a crucial part of my internal map of the world (slowly expanding one road/city at a time). Maybe I remembered it because it had my name in the title or maybe it was because "The Peters world map stands as an interesting and controversial attempt to use cartographic imagery for progressive causes."

But anyways, that company that sells Peter's projection maps? They're location in my hometown of Amherst, MA. What do you know...

Self pumping basketball

I've been amazed with these ever since I first saw them. Spalding makes a basketball that has a built in pump. So you can easily and anywhere reinflate your basketball. I can't remember the number of times I was searching for a pump hoping I could find one, because without it, we couldn't play basketball. I feel somehow like a consumer whore for it, but I really really like it when good engineering makes it so there's one less thing to stress about.

link from core77

Google and Ask Jeeves referrences on the simpsons

The simpsons had two geeky referrences tonight. First Marge accused homer of spending his days "googling" your own name. (Marge made air quotes). And then homer said he didn't know what something was, and he would just Ask Jeeves. It'll be great to watch these episodes in 20 years.

Update: (2005-03-21 2:14PM) by Peter
This morning, Slashdot reported: "CNet's reporting that Ask Jeeves is being bought by InterActive Corp for $2 billion." Ask Jeeves (ask.com, excite.com, iwon.com) and InterActive Corp (expedia, ticketmaster, match.com, citysearch) makes a nice medium sized conglomorate. Yay mergers.

China sells toxic dye (Sudan I) to consumers

"The front page of today's Beijing News dedicates the headline and photo to KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). The company has openly admitted that the presence of Sudan I - a red, chemical dye which is thought to contribute to cancer - has been discovered in two products sold on the Chinese market: the 'New Orleans Roast Chicken Wings' and the 'New Orleans Roast Chicken Legs'."
Although I did eat at KFC while I was in China, I never had either of these things. Sundan I causes cancer? Then it must taste really good.
(link from BoingBoing)

Worst Tattoo Ever

from jwz.

Boondocks comic pulled

If you've been following the indy media lately, you probably heard about The Chicago Tribune pulling a boondocks comic. Here is the comic from 2005-02-28:

The text reads: "Bush recorded admitting that he smoked weed / Maybe he smoked it to take the edge off the coke." Awesome. I have mixed feelings about boondocks, but overall I think it's a pretty slick comic. I think I'd probably enjoy it more if I actually got a chance to read a bunch of them sequentially so as I could get to know the characters. Maybe I should pick up the first collection, Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper and start there. And for your viewing pleasure, the next days comic too...also making fun of bush's drug riddled past.

Brainsoup in

Spell whatever you want using images from the Y! images search, using web of letters which I found through waxy links.

Was saddam's capture faked?

We all remember the fact that jessica lynch's recovery was ~~fabricated~~exagerated. But now, the Saddam capture might have been the same sort of thing.

"A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated."

Oops. I keep having this feeling that people will look back on the bush presidency not unlike how they look back on that of Nixon. Manipulative and evil. Oh wait, "he is not a crook." Right.
Link from a very non-partisan souce, Crooks and Liars.

Clean pages, easier to blog

I'm already finding that having a simplistic looking blog makes it much easier for me to blog. Hopefully I won't go dark like I did for the previous 4-5 months.

We must love each other or we must die

I'm pretty sure I saw this before, but in 1964 Lyndon Johnson ran an ad dubbed 'daisy'. Where a small girl flips the petals off a daisy counting them all cute like. Then there is a countdown and images of nuclear bombs. The voiceover says: "These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of god's children can llive or to go into the garden, we must love each other or we must die. Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd, the stakes are too high for you to stay home."

Wow. Incredible. I have a local mirror of the John Daisy ad, but PBS has a bunch of historical television ads for presidential cantidates. I got this from the 1964 page.

from thinkness.

Oceans 420

Ocean's 12 did some filming in Amsterdam, apparently "Partying on the set in Amsterdam apparently got pretty stoney due to stars' easy access to legal pot. According to insiders, Warner Bros got word that the toking was causing production delays, translating into increased costs to get the film made." Brad Pitt and George Clooney, smoking pot? Suprise suprise.

From the respectable Canabis Culture Magazine via Hot Links.

I switched to Serendipity

As you might have noticed, I've switched to a new blogging system. I'm no longer using Nucleus or BLOG: CMS. I'm using Serendipity. It's written in PHP and uses Smarty for templating. Now if I want to edit templates I don't have to learn something I'll never use again. Most importantly, the spam control should be much better. (I hope). And it imported all my old entries relatively painlessly. Any problems, let me know.

Oh and in case you're curious, Sumorai is back up again, also running with Serendipity.

Enable auto insert notification/enable autoplay

Autorun is something that many people seem to really hate.

I understand that, I've never been too fond of the idea of applications running automatically from a cd without asking me anything. This is one reason I like the way Windows XP...it lets you choose which application you should use to launch a disc. Like if it's got MP3s you can launch it with winamp, AVI files with Windows Media Player or if it's a DVD Video WinDVD or PowerDVD, you can choose for that particular disc. Coolness. Except some burning applications do you a favor and turn off Auto-Insert notification. They do this because you don't want windows doing ANYTHING to a cd as you're burning it. It's easy to disable (google for it, there are a bunch of different ways, it's easy.) Enabling it again just doesn't seem to get the same coverage.

So here's how to get it working again:
Open up regedit.
go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom
Set AutoRun to 0 and clear everything from AutoRunAlwaysDisable.
Restart.

Ta-da. (thanks to lockergnome)

80x15 buttons

I found a site that has an archive of thousands of 80x15 Buttons. Those little buttons you see on the side of blogs. Nifty.

If you don't know what they are, they look like this:

New server up and running

Yep. We reinstalled.
Now if the newly found stability was combined with me actually writing stuff in my blog. That'd be good too.

Numa Numa kid made the today show

The numa numa kid was covered on the today show today. Wow.

Global Warming

Nuff said.

link from Portal of Evil

V-Day

It's too late for V-day, but YouYesYou.net has some awesome v-days cards.

"On some Friday nights, students at Colby College can sit down to dinner and savor two beverages found in few college dining halls: beer and wine. The program began last fall and was initiated by the Student Government Association. It's intended to teach students to drink in moderation while showing an alternative to the binge drinking common on college campuses."

(Link from Portal of Evil)

Full House - Season 1 on DVD

Yay! My prayers have been answered.

full house season 1 on dvd for only $21!

Johnny Carson died

Although no major news outlet has a story. All of them have a breaking headline. R.I.P. He was 79.

How could I do that to me.

"I read somewhere that when you catch yourself in a behavior you're trying to break, you should ask yourself, "Am I helping myself right now, or hurting myself?" I've found it increasingly easy to change course once I've agreed that what I'm doing is destructive. It makes me feel protective. Like, How could I do that to me?"

stolen from Mighty Girl

So I switched my phone servce

I switched my cell phone service. First to cingular, and then I got a new number in NC. Apparently I couldn't do both at the same time because Cingular didn't buy ATT in the Carolinas. SunCom did. Interesting no? So two new SIM cards later, I now have a new phone number. I sent around a text message with my new number in it, but if you don't have sms service, leave a comment here and I will be sure to call you with the new number, I just don't feel comfortable publishing it on the interweb. But it got cold here real quick. Last thursday it was 70 degrees and today it's snowing. We probably won't get more than an inch or so, but this is rediculous.

Family Guy on broadcast again

So I was flipping through my wonderful selection of broadcast networks...and family guy was on. I almost don't miss cable. Actually, that's only partly true. I only miss it now that I can't watch stuff (downloaded television, movies, dvds, etc) on my laptop. But now I'm relegated to watching a little tv (this morning there was church and infomercials on...that's all) to keep myself busy, I've also started watching VHS movies that I haven't touched in ages. I've put off buying a stand alone dvd player for a while because my lappy has a tv out too. Don't matter though, I borrowed Office Space from cam on VHS and I'm going to put that in now.

Wow, I'm terrible at this updating game

So I haven't posted in forever. There's not really an excuse other than me not making time for it until a few days ago when the power adapter for my laptop just died. I used my laptop at a cafe and then when I got home, it just didn't work anymore. So I checked it with a multimeter (it really is the adapter, not my laptop) and called IBM. After giving them all the relevant info they said they would happily send out a new power adapter...once they were in stock. Although they couldn't give me a firm ship date, I will likely not get it until the end of next week (at the soonest). Ouch. So I borrowed a monitor from cameron and have hooked up my old Pentium Pro 200 that I've been using as a file server and now it is my primary pc. Yep, I'm using a computer that is older/not as well equiped as the second hand PC i first went to college with. It's not that bad though, it's suprisingly functional although very slow.

Maybe tommorow I will take some pictures of my living room and throw them up here. My apartment is much more homely now that I bought a couch. It completely changes the whole room. If only I had a loveseat to fill the other space in my living room. I guess for the moment two chairs and the full size couch will mean simple seating for 5. I've only ever had more people than that at my apartment once, last night. Maybe it's finally time for me to throw a party or something. A late housewarming...

In general, my apartment is minimalistic. Old computer, small television, (14"), a dreamcast, no cable (yay broadcast!), a small kitchen table, far too much plastic furniture (although no plastic chairs), etc. But all together I'm kind of proud of it. It's the first place that's ever really been my own and I dig it.

I spent 30minutes in a McDonalds

I took my lunch break and went and sat down in a McDonalds. It's something that I haven't done in a really long time. I usually just catch a meal to go and eat it on the run or go back to someone's house. Eating there at lunch time is a distinctly different experience. The people who came into eat at McDonalds were a different crowd from those who used the drive through. Although my generalizations are generalizations, I noticed a few interesting things. People who were sitting down were many times more likely to be of a blue collar trade. Painters, construction workers, electricians, etc. Although there were some of those at the drive through, there were many more inside. Simplistic as it may be, white collar (sallaried) workers are much more likely (in my experience) to have a lunch break that is not as clearly defined. i.e. take a 1/2 hour lunch when it fits in your schedule and not from 12:00-12:30 everyday. If you have 1/2 an hour to sit down and you know that, you are more likely to just hang out and eat your lunch with your co-workers.

merry xmas eve

Great night

So I just got back from a great night. My day was kind of eh, and it was raining and so I took a nap. A little bit after waking up from my nap I decided that I should go out to the local pub (the moan and dove) a place where I always end up seeing old high school friends. And that i did.

I saw:

Kyle: who I've known since elementary school. He graduated from UC berkley and is now living in Boston with Eddie (see below) and two of my other friends from high school (Andy Trafford and Stuart Khelar) as a computer programmer.

Eddie: Haven't seen since high school, was working at a bank, but he quit and now he's going to work at some publisher and live in the north shore area.

Abby Conolly: I've known her since forever. Like she used to live down the street from me. She's a hottie, as always, and still quite crazy and out of control. I feel old because I've settled down and she hasn't, but apparently she's been working as an actress in Las Vegas (?) but she was living in Santa Monica for a while. Oh and she flashed the bar tender before leaving. Um yeah.

Daisy: Haven't seen since high school. She went to school in Oregon...spent the last 4 months in Ireland working with horses, but now she is moving to San Francisco to become an electrician. It's want she wants to do and she's excited about it: awesome.

Matt Crutch: Apparently still in Amherst working as a high school hockey coach. He likes it and does his thing. He used to be a dick, but he's certainly settled down a bit.

Alex Keene: See previous post about getting a breathizlizer...he was in the car when that all went down. He's in MedSchool at UMass medical center in Worchester.

Best day at school ever

Yep. Follow the previous entry two days ago, I'm now having a great day. Half day and we're doing nothing. I mean nothing. Like one of the other teachers brought in an xbox for his classroom. I thought I was pushing it by not having any sort lesson planned and just assuming the kids would toy on the internet instead of anything educational. But no, I don't even have my own kids in class. Kids are just hanging out waiting for the day to be over...only one of them is even in my class this period. Music + internet + quiet kids + half day = awesome.

Foxtrot 12/16/04

This is almost as funny as the sexually explicit gingerbread cookies that Doug, Minta and Erin made. There is some serious humor about seeing a gingerbread man with a penis larger than his head...."you just think that's my leg..."

Rolo Tower!

Congratulations to jo for completing an awesome.
In case you were wondering, the book it is stacked on is Travels With Samantha by Philip Greenspun and it's a book I've been re-reading recently. Lots of big color pictures alongside his travellog from Cambridge to Alaska and back.

Worst day at work ever.

Subject says it all.

Lakeside charter woes

Jew Hey Ya

I normally wouldn't pass such things along, but this Jew Hey Ya flash parody/animation is mildy amusing. It has the wonderful quote "Oy is just yo backwards". Yep. I also have a local mirror of it as well.

I changed the front page

I'm finally getting the chance to work on the website again now that the server is back up and it is the weekend. I just spent a little while putting together a shitty intro/index page for duckies.org let me know what you think of it.

Back after a week of down time

After a week of downtime, we're back. Sorry about that all.

Suprnova alternatives...

In the last couple days, Suprnova(my source of all things that can described accurately with two words: "fast downloading") has been down for the last couple days. The two other sites (purely television) besides suprnova that I've been using are Tvtorrents.net and btefnet.com. But while going without suprnova, I stumbled across a guy who a month ago put up a list of Top 10 Suprnova.org Alternatives. I thought them interesting enough to pass along.

Nice tits!

A student had visited this in one of my classes and I found it in the history file. Nice-Tits.org. Excellent. (Safe for work)

Boy Meets World Marathon on ABC Family

On Sunday, ABC Family is showing 9hrs of Boy Meets World. Too bad I'll be in the car likely while this is going on, but for anyone who won't be...you should check it out. I think it starts at 12pm or 1pm.

First real update in a while

Ok, so anyone who used to regularly read brainsoup has now probably completely forgotten due to my non-existant updates over the last month or so. In my defense, I did not have any internet at my new apartment until this past saturday, so there. But anyways, I've been working at my job for a couple weeks now and I'm starting to settle in. I'm realizing how much work teaching is. I really need to be well prepared before trying to teach a lesson. The kids are out of control, but no longer get to me, I just throw them out of the class when they get in the way of another student's learning. The commute isn't too bad, especially because there is never traffic on the way in, and the traffic on the way back is just minor slowdowns as I get into greensboro, never like stop and go, just dense. The starting at 8am is a little rough on me though. Because school starts at 8:00am, I can never be late. Um, ever really. So I need to make sure that I am there by 7:45 to be positive. The drive is only 35minutes, so I shoot to leave the house at 7:00 and usually leave a couple minutes after. Getting up at 6:30 five days a week is killing me. If I were to want to actuallky get 8hrs sleep I would need to be asleep at 10:30pm...I rarely get to bed before 1am.

At least I get free breakfast and lunch, but I'll save that for another entry.

Cock Flavoured Soup Mix

Thanks mike.

Cigars

"I hate this. It's like smoking a dirty sock, only easier."

--That 70s Show S07E03.

That's how I feel too.

RIP ODB

Old Dirty Bastard is Dead.

Sesame Street: 35 Years ago today

35 Years ago today, Sesame Street came on the air. What a great show. Just a month ago when I was at Joanna's house I watched Sesame Street goes to the Met...quite amusing. Apparently there is an even better video that I didn't know existed until Jo informed me of it...Sesame Street - Big Bird In Japan. Oh baby. Apparently like 9 months ago they re-released it on DVD. But anyways, happy b-day sesame street.

Teaching technology: Day 1

Well, yesterday was my first day teaching. It wasn't bad at all. For all but the last class of the day, I had the Internal Suspension teacher in my classroom with me. This worked out really well because he is young (25) and has a really strong bond with all the students. So he was able to keep them under control when things got a little bit edgy and such. He has a lot more in common with the student than I do...he coaches high school football, plays lots of video games (20-30+ hrs/week) and isn't affraid to get physical with the kids. This was something I was not quite used to. In every school I've ever attended, the only time that a teacher would have any physical contact with a student (beyond maybe a hand lightly on a shoulder) was when there was actively a fight breaking out. This guy did not hesitate to physically move the kids back to their seats or out of the classroom when necessary. It think it worked because these kids have gone through schools where teachers are affraid to touch them and they have learned that most teachers won't physically block them if they try to push past the teacher.

The kids are definately a mixed group. Some of them are really out there all the time...i.e. they need constant attention and direction. But most of them are alright most of the time, but clearly have a short temper. Most of them have probably had trouble in the past resulting from them snapping and getting into a fight. My job, as much as helping the students learn, is to continually make sure that the minor situations that happen between students don't turn into fights.

I think I can do this job. I just need to make sure I have activities to keep them engaged and occupied for as much of classtime as possible. That combined with a recognition that sometimes it might be better for the students learning if they get time to unwind/cool off and not do any schoolwork. We'll see how it goes, but I'm optimistic.

I'm going to be a teacher, yipee

So I've waited to post an update about how my interview went because I was pretty sure I landed the job. I didn't want to jinx the whole thing by writing that in my blog. In fact, everytime I've mentioned how well the interview went, I've actually knocked on wood...

But anyways. I went in on monday morning, all dressed up nice and pretty like for my interview. I was pretty sure that my appointment was for 10am, but I had this little voice in my head that said it was 9am. So I got up and got there a little after 9. They were suprised to see me early (really early) but she commented on how that was good. After a short wait, the principal of the school invited me into her office where we conducted the interview. It was not particularly different than other interview-like-type things that I've had, lots of questions on both sides of the table. I have a pretty strong understanding of the position...it will be essentially be teaching basic computer applications to these kids. Word, excel, etc. Not exactly what I wanted to find myself doing, but I want to teach and this gets me into it headlong.

So I got the call this afternoon. She said pending my criminal background check from MA, I got the job. We then began the "when can you start" game. I tried to feel her out and pretty quickly got the message she would've liked me to start Thursday...so I said I could start Friday. I need more than a few hours to plan and get into the mindset of dealing with a classroom full of kids, who no matter how what positive thoughts I have, will probably give me some trouble. And hell, I'd like to maybe have some sort of a lesson plan together or something.

So I will be getting an apartment here in Greensboro, likely somewhere within a mile or two of guilford. The school is in Elon, which a 30-40min drive (depending on traffic). That's about as long a commute as I'm willing to put up with. They'll be stealing 40hrs a week from me, what's another 5 in the scheme of things. For my efforts I will be getting a lateral entry teaching certificate and a little more than 30k a year. Not bad for an entry level teacher...(an entry level teacher in Guilford county gets like 28k, and guilford is higher than many other counties). So yeah, that's the deal with me and my new job. Now tommorow I need find a place to sleep for the next 9 months.

I'm in greensboro

Ok, here's to update everyone. I am now in Greensboro. I am temporarily living at cam and amy's house while amy is in London. The drive down wasn't too bad, I managed to do it in a little more than 12hrs, including a half hour stop for dinner/gas. Tommorow I have an interview about a technology teaching position and I'm wicked excited. And I get to dress up too. Yay! But anyways, I'm here and if you want to hang out drop me a line on my cell or text me.

Kevin Smith on Degrassi TNG

"Growing up in New Jersey, Smith started watching Degrassi to help escape the drudgery of working as a cash register clerk at a local convenience store. "The first time I watched it, I thought this is insanely melodramatic and by the end of the episode I was weeping." Ever since then, he's been hooked. He's even fallen head over heels for the Degrassi: The Next Generation, which airs on CTV Tuesday night at 8:30 p.m. ET. But Smith is taking his love of the show much further. He's signed up to appear in a three-episode storyline featuring "a fictionalized version of myself," and Jason Mewes, better known as Jay from the 'Jay and Silent Bob' duo Smith popularized in his films."

I've recently become a big fan of Degrassi:TNG...I've now seen every episode and I'm considering trying to get both of the original Degrassi (Junior) High series...

If you want to find out more check out the official Degrassi TNG site or information on The N's Degrassi site. If you want to watch some Degrassi:TNG on the N, it's on every night. Or if you're poor/cheap/technologically inclined, the Yahoo group Degrassi TNG Hangout has links to ways to download TNG episodes using SoulSeek.

(link from BoingBoing, but there's more over at CTV)

Cat hooked me up with a potential job

Apparently, while fitting some kids from Lakeside Charter Public School for uniforms, cat found out that they were in need of a technology/computer teacher. And she thought of and recommended me. Yippee. So I called them this morning and they called me back this afternoon. I'm going to see them Monday the 25th to talk more about stuff. I'm wicked excited.

Last night at work

I just finished my last night at work. It went relatively smoothly, but there were two things that made the night much more enjoyable. At some point, probably around 12 this guy came in and bought some gas and a couple other things...then he bought some gum...then after I had rung up the gum, he threw another two dollars down on the counter and started to walk away. This interaction followed...I said "What's that for?" he said "a tip"...i laughed, and he said "you think it's funny?" to which I just made an awkward face, and he walked away. To give you some context, no one ever tips people who work at cumby's. So I took the two bucks. I thought, it a nice bonus on my last night.

So like an hour later this guy comes back, and as he walks in the door he says: "oh its the guy who thinks tips are funny." So I tell him about how no one ever tips and how people sometimes leave messes (slurpies on the floor, etc) and so he comes up and buys a yoohoo. And pays for it with a $20 and says keep the change. I was speechless.

Today he'd be 64

Today, if he were alive, John Lennon would have been 64. For the next couple days you can grab The Beatles - When I'm 64 in commemoration.

I tried to post this when it was relevant, but it failed. Sorry.

I just got this email, it's really funny...I've always joked with other people about the fact that I've had the same email address for a long ass time...

Hi Peter Tripp

According to our records, you have last filled or updated your data at the

Internet Computer Dating Service (http://www.computer-dating.com) on 03/12/1996.

So far we have sent you 1 lists of most compatible dates, the last one

of which was on 04/12/1996. In addition, new joining compatible dates have

been referred to you whenever possible. However, no new dates have been referred

to you in the last 4 years because we haven't heard from you for a long time.

If you have already found a mate (whether through our service or otherwise),

we would appreciate it very much if you could answer a fascinating survey that

tries to find out which variables most affect satisfaction from the Mate. As

you know, the Internet Computer Dating Service has been given for free until

now, so as a matter of fairness we would appreciate it very much if you could

answer this questionnaire. The survey is fascinating and thought provoking

and will start you thinking on some interesting aspects of relationships.

If you have found a mate and wish to be Frozen, so that nobody receives your

data, you should also fill the FREEZE form at

http://www.computer-dating.com/freeze.htm

If you wish to receive now a new list of most compatible dates, simply

reply with the words Send new list.

If you wish to make changes in your data and receive a new list of most

compatible dates, you can refill your data at

http://www.computer-dating.com/online.shtml

The survey is at: http://www.computer-dating.com/couhd88r.htm

Thanks, Yaron

Apparently, that long ass time is at least 8.5 years. Oh yeah, and for some humor...you might now realize that I was playing around with some random ass online dating service to try to find penpals in the spring of 1996...that's like my freshman year in high school. Wow. I'm wierd.

I Heart Huckabees

I saw a trailer for this before and it looked really funny, but now the release is coming up so I thought I'd make a note of it. I Heart Huckabees looks fucking hilarious. I'm sure it will become a cult classic. So if you've got a few minutes, check out the fox website or just watch the trailer on apple's site. Select theaters on October 1st...anyone want to go to Newark to see it with me?

New spaceballs...

Ain't It Cool News is reporting that according to a Q/A in Playbill Magazine with Mel Brooks, there will be a sequel to Spaceballs. Hot!

Here is the full interview:
Continue reading "New spaceballs..."

Long awaited update

Ok, um, as you might have noticed I haven't updated in a long time. This is because I have been in transition and I did not want a discussion about me to develop on my blog in the middle of everything. Long story short, I'm no longer in China, I left on good terms with my school, I will not be returning there anytime soon and I will be going to Anson and Katie's wedding. I am hoping after the wedding to get a job in Greensboro and move back down there, but in the interim I am picking up a little cash by working at Cumberland Farms with Mike. (Yay service industry!)

That's pretty much it.

Count to ten in chinese

The chinese have a nifty way of counting to ten on their fingers. I just found a nice animated gif showing you how...

Very useful for figuring out prices when I don't speak the language...especially at small shops.

Stolen from Chinatour.com

China: Classes, Junior 1 and Junior 2 reflections

Now I have dialup and semi-working internet in my office. Updates should come in a more timely fashion. I apologize about the flood of updates. They have been building up on my laptop for a while now. It feels good to get them posted. You might want to read them in reverse order from the bottom of the page up, so that you understand them in context.

But anyways, I've now sucessfully taught two of the three levels that I will be teaching here. Junior 1, is like 7th graders and Junior 2 is like 8th graders. Tommorow I will go to the senior high school and teach a couple Senior 1 classes. I think they are like 16. But anyways, the two junior one classes that I taught went relatively smoothly. As would be expected the second was better than the first. Consequently, this meant that I was able to get through the lesson plan that I had done in the first class much faster than when I did it initially. So I was left with a bunch of extra time. For those curious, I did end up singing C is for Cookie. But I ran into one minor cultural roadblock. None of them knew what a cookie was. No matter how I tried, they never got it. And I didn't have a chance before my second class to run out and buy any cookies so they had the same problem. They sang happily anyways. I followed this up with something right out of the song "Let's see if we can come up with other things that start with C" [oh who cares about other things]...of course the connection fell on deaf ears. It got them a little bit more comfortable with me. I figured out that they pretty much understood only 10-15% of what I was saying. Even when I was repeating, restating and acting out everything possible. It was very disconcerting. I tried to do simon says with the second class, but they just couldn't get it. Eh, whatever, it's ok for me to fail as a teacher, it was my first day.

The junior 2 class I had today was much better. I took one of the activities out of the books mimi gave me which was about rules. I think this is especially appropriate for introducing and beginning a new class. The "rules" were relating to how to do well in english class. I started with a few simple rules ("You must speak english") and encouraged them to come up with their own written rules in pairs. With some encouragement and suggestions they came up with some really good rules which I (or they) wrote on the board and we talked about them. On a couple rules I helped them with their grammar or changed their content a little. (e.g. onto "We must be polite to the teachers" I added "and to your classmates"). That worked really well, I liked it as an activity and will use it again with the Junior 2 classes. The junior 1 classes would not be able to do this I don't think as Junior 2s seemed to struggle with the concept anyways.

China: Beginning Classes

2004-09-06

So this fucking sucks. It's 9:30 in the morning. I start my classes this afternoon and I can't seem to find Bill. I still don't have a copy of the text from which I should be teaching. I've decided that I do have the balls to try to get them to sing. Yep, first day, they'll be singing. Or I will be singing and they will be laughing. The more I thought about it, C is for Cookie is a perfect introduction. I can use that as a jumping point to have them do a simple activity which will help me get an idea of how large their vocabulary is. I will have them list off words that begin with C, and then some other letters. It's very elementary and these kids (13) might find it a little childish, but they will get over it...or I'll come home. I got the idea from one of the books that my aunt Mimi bought for me before I left. One of the oxford press books...I'll provide a link, I swear.

So yeah, since I wrote that last paragraph, things have pretty much been taken care of.

China: English Speakers

2004-06-09

So on Saturday night I ended up having a really great time. I sucessfully took a cab downtown by myself and found the McDonald's where I was going to meet Scott and his friend. I had intentionally gotten there a little while early so that I would have the oppertunity to walk around the downtown area and get a feel for it. The center of Changzhou has a large park/common area with a mall underneath. This is where the McDonalds is. There are two major roads that intersect at one of the corners. I chose to take a walk down both of those roads in one direction each. This area of Changzhou was much more developed and commercial than the area nearby my school. The shops all have full length window displays and are more western in character and in merchandise. In addition to this, there were a large number of street vendors and other people begging for money. The vendors either sold small merchandise like cell phone cases or food. One thing that I had never seen sold that a number of food vendors had was cantelope on a stick. Big pieces too. A couple of those begging for money really upset me. A saw a man with no arms just sitting there with a bowl in front him. Honestly, what can this man do but sit and beg. Later I saw a man sitting on a small cart who had no legs and deformed arms. If these man are on the streets, whatever communist/socialist systems china has are failing. I also saw three men with monkeys. No, not like the gay porn michael and I got a pop-up ad for years ago, but just guys chillin, with monkey's on leashes. I thought it cute at first, but then as I stopped a second to look at them, they started jerking the leashes and pushing the monkeys to do tricks. After I watched one just start backflipping non-stop I started to feel a little sick. Suddenly, although I had been looking at just one guy with his monkey, two more guys with monkeys came closer and closer to me and were yelling at their monkeys and pushing their bowls in front of me. Although I had given a little money to the first man, the other two men were now aggressively hounding me with their bowls. I quickly realized that I was reinforcing their behavior and just turned away and left. One of the men continued to follow me for 10-15 feet shouting at me to give him money, but I didn't look back and just walked away. Intense.

So after my little walk, I went to McDonalds a few minutes before 7:30 (our meeting time) and bought myself a 6 piece McNugget meal. McDonalds are the same anywhere. It's the same food, just cheaper. 17.3 Yuan for a meal (~$2.25) So after sitting there for a few minutes eating my meal, feeling a little conspicuous as a few people there were staring at me, Scott and Yusu (sp?) showed up. Scott is 22, from Atlanta, about 6 foot tall and has been here only a couple days more than. Yusu is french, of average built, spoke excellent english and has been in Changzhou since February. They both work at a school that is close to downtown. They have dorm style accomodations and there are like four or five other English teachers there. Two are three of which are older (40+ years). Because there are more english teachers in their program, there is always other english teachers who can help new tecahers adjust. This minimizes the burden on the school staff, who apparently are not very helpful at all.

This party that we are going to is a little ways (4-5KM away) and so we will be taking two different buses to get there. I was a little worried because I had not yet taken the bus, but with their guidance, I knew things would be fine. This party is apparently at a house with five girls, one or two of which Yusu knows because they have been here for a while. So we finish are food and go to walk to the bus. While walking, Bill calls to check up on me, to make sure I was able to get into the city alright, which was nice of him. He is a little nervous (as am I) about me getting back to the school, but I assure him that things will work out. I figure that the worst thing that could happen is that I end up staying at the house of these girls or with Scott/Yusu if I can't get myself back to my apartment.

There seem to be a large number of buses (that's what you get in a city of more than a million people where less than 1% have cars), Yusu says we are waiting for the 16 and we will then connect to the 29. Um, yeah, and stuff. So buses are 1 Yuan (wicked cheap) or 2 yuan for the air conditioned bus. Yep, they run two seperate versions of many of the bus lines. I'm not sure about how I feel about this. Having buses be cheaper and thus more financially accessible to the general population is good, but having two seperate buses to me seems like a clear class deliniation. This bus is nicer and cooler...and by the way there are no poor people on it. So after waiting for a while and not taking an air conditioned 16, we take the 16 bus like four or five stops and get off. We then walk a little ways to make our connection. Apparently there is a different number bus that doesn't run as often that we could have taken and not had to walk, but we're able bodied 20-somethings, we need not be lazy. Or at least not too lazy. So we then took the 29 for probably two or so miles, but I'm not really sure. It seemed like a long time. And then we got off. Again, I didn't actually know where we were as the buses turned a few times as they went along their routes.

We walked into a small shop that was open across the street and Scott and I bought ourselves some beer. 2/3 Liter (660ml) bottles for 2 Yuan. Wicked cheap. So we continued to walk down the street for another block or two and then arrived at this really posh neighborhood. In china it seems, any remotely nice neighborhood or building is gated. This is for exactly what you might imagine: keeping poor people out. That's it, no fooling. So we walked through the gate and into the complex. I'm not sure if they would have stopped us at the gate if were chinese. Two tall white guys and someone who is clearly a foreigner are not the sort of people that the gate/wall were built to keep out. So we walked over to their house and went in the front door.

When we walked in, about half the group there were foreigners. There were a few chinese people who spoke varying levels of english, all reasonably profficient. The people there seemed to come from all places, there was a girl (Erin) from Worchester, MA and tall guy (?) from Cameroon, a girl (Annah) from Iowa, a girl (Natalie) from New Zealand and another girl (?) who was originally from India, but grew up in the states. As the night progressed more and more people showed up. There was a guy (Toby) from the Boston area, a few other folks from the U.S. as well as some people the U.K. Also, Natalie's father was there visiting for a few weeks. Everyone seemed really nice and as the evening progressed I met a wide variety of folks from all over the globe. And by all over I just mean western countries. So all of the folks at this house and a number of the other people had all come over here through a program called C.I.E. I had vaguely heard about it while I was searching for oppertunities here, but the idea of paying $900 + airfare for the program didn't really appeal to me. Apparently all of the C.I.E. folks arrived in Shanghai about the same time and did a little orientation there. Sounds cool, but $900 isn't pocket change. Apparently these folks have parties about once a month, so I imagine that any sort of anxiety that may come from not having people to speak english to will be squelched, knowing that at least once in a while I will have an oppertunity to just relax and speak english freely.

Although many of the people came through C.I.E. there were some others who had come independantly and were teaching at the same location as C.I.E. teachers. There were about 10 teachers who were all living in this complex and teaching at the nearby International School. Some of the people there though, had travelled much further. A few had come from a little ways 10-40km outside the city by bus and a few had come from Nanjing (~2hrs by bus). Pretty intense. I don't think I would've been ready to travel that kind of distance to see other english speakers at this point in the game, but hey, who knows. Someone else who was there was a 28year old chinese guy who apparently owned like seven factories. He had also brought a couple of his managers and their girlfriends along as well. Initially it is suprising to me that such a complex wide-reaching network exists, especially as some of these people have not been here for more than a week or so. But, foreigners stick together...esepcially in a land where no matter whether I can speak the chinese just as well as those who are native born, I will always be identified as a foreigner and never truly accepted, because of the color of my skin.

After a long night of chatting with all sorts of people about all sorts of things (including this English guy Phil who used to work at Computer Associates...we geeked out for a while, it felt good), I decided that 4am was an appropriate time to go home. After exchanging phone numbers with another one of the girls who lived there (Elizabeth) so that I would be kept in the loop for future activities I left to go hunt for a cab. Very quickly one came along and I tried to tell him to take me to Bejao Middle School (using the chinese words for middle school). After going back and forth for a long time...I was ready to give up and try again with another cab driver, he called up someone on the phone and then handed me the phone. The guy on the other line spoke english. And after some discussion back and forth he finally understood what I was saying. After some initial back and forth he was like "Bejao high school?" and I was like "no, bejao middle school" and he was like "bejao high school." So then he looked some more and went, "Oh, Bejao middle school." And so I handed the phone back to the driver. He then discussed things furiously with the guy on the phone and I believe got directions and he took me home. I am convinced that it was not my terrible attempts at speaking chinese that caused me trouble with the cab driver (certainly didn't help), but that he honestly didn't know where I was asking to be taken. Of course I will never know. Once I arrived at my school, the front gate was closed and the guard/attendant wasn't in the little booth. After looking around for a minute, I just hopped the gate and walked over to my house. As I got in my apartment and opened one of the windows facing the school the guard was walking past and I waved at him and he nodded at me. My guess is that we just doing rounds and had closed the gate while doing that. It still doesn't make me feel that safe about the whole thing though, because it means that it probably would not be very difficult for someone to get at my house late at night. Whatever though, I got home safely and met up with some folks that I probably would have never known existed for months if not the entire time I was here.

China: Meeting Folks

2004-09-04 4:45PM

So I will be meeting folks to go to some party tonight. I've been emailing with this guy Scott that found me through my blog and he invited me to go to a party at the house of some other American's living in Changzhou. He called my cell phone and said we should meet at the underground McDonalds in the center of the city at 7:30. I said I didn't know where that was, but that I would ask Bill and figure out how to get there. I called bill and he told me the chinese words to say to the cab driver so I would get there. If that doesn't work, he said I should just call him on his cell phone and then hand the phone to the driver so he can tell them where to go. That should work.

This McDonalds is apparently very close to where Bill and I went on thursday when we were getting me set up. The McDonalds is apparently diagonally across the street from where I got the SIM card for my cell phone. Which by the way, was pretty painless to setup. I just had to find the correct place to go and then buy the SIM card. Bill seemed to be very worried about the whole process, but I think that was as much because he was not familiar with GSM and the whole SIM card thing. Looking back on it, I bet I could have done it myself, although it would've been hard. The way it works is that I bought a SIM card for 50 yuan and then 100 yuan worth of usage. It's all prepaid and such. The cost for phone calls is 0.4 Yuan/min for calls within the network (same cell provider) and 0.6 Yuan/min for all calls outside of the network (different cell providers, land lines and incoming from anybody but my provider). That works out to be about 7cents/min. That's very reasonable. There is a 5yuan/month fee to keep the service and I can refill with a minimum of 100yuan at any bank. Yep, I just walk into a bank with my phone number and cash and things get taken care of. I don't know how I can check the value left on my account, but I'll ask Bill at some point when I think I start getting close to the end.

Speaking of banks, yesterday I got my bank account setup. It also, was reasonably painless and there is a branch that is like two blocks away from where I'm living. I was able to deposit both Yuan and Dollars because I have an "international" account. In my passbook it has each ammount listed in their respective currency...I think the conversion doesn't even occur until I actually withdraw money which is nice, because conversion back (Yuan->Dollars) is a little difficult because of the currency controls in place. Supposedly I should be able to convert 80% of my paychecks back into USD if I want to. So I could leave the country with like 4k if I converted the maximum ammount and spent very little. I doubt this will happen, but I'm sure I will walk with some of it because I don't think I can spend the 133 Yuan/day that I would have to average to spend everything.

To put that ammount of money in context, I bought a combo pack of a liter of each Orange Juice (100% juice) and apple juice for 10.5 Yuan. A pack with pre-cut vegetables and meat for stirfry is like 5-8 Yuan (much more expensive than buying the vegetables/meat). Packs of Ramen (with a spice packet, an oil/meat packet and a hot sauce packet) are like 0.9-1.3 Yuan individually and like 20-30% cheaper if you buy a multipack. Milk is like 0.6 Yuan for 8 oz. Speaking of milk, I decided that I need to drink like 8oz of milk a day to make sure I get the calcium I need. Without Tropicana with calcium, there will be no other way that I get my RDA. Other things are equally as inexpensive, toilet paper is about 1 yuan a roll (I bought a 10 pack) and a i bought a liter of concentrated dish soap for like 10 yuan. As Bill said, 4000 Yuan/month is a lot of money in China. Especially when I have my rent, electricity, water, heat, phone, internet and cable paid for. Not to mention the fact that they provided me with all the appliances, cookware, linens, furniture, a tv and a computer. Oh yeah, and I don't need to pay to commute either. I'm pretty much fucking set.

Gourmet Powder: >99% Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

2004-09-04 5:45

In america, almost every chinese has signs that say "NO M.S.G." I've never thought much of it, but today in the grocery store I saw something a little different. They called it "Gourmet Powder." The picture may not give you an understanding, but that bag is probably a foot tall...it's a big fucking bag.

China: Shopping

2004-09-04 1:04PM

So yesterday I went shopping for the first time. The day before, Bill had taken me into a commercial area and showed me where the market (fresh vegetables, live seafood, live chickens and fresh beef/portk), bank, bakery, drugstore, supermarket and KFC were. Obviously the most important of those being the KFC (Not!). But anyways, yesterday I went out on my own in morning (6:30AM) to take a walk around the block. I decided to walk the opposite way of how Bill had taken me (new territory!). I ended up making a square where the first two sides were new to me and the other two sides were "familiar" (i.e. I had been there before).

So in the afternoon yesterday, after I sat in on three classes I went out and bought a few things for the first time. The first thing I bought was a powerstrip. Although it may suprise some of you out there, but I have a lot of electronics and all of them require power in one form or another. Also the fact that in the main part of the living room there are effectively only two outlets, one on either side and one for each of the appliances [AC, Fridge, Dryer, Water Heater]) at the other end of the room. They provided me with one powerstrip so that the TV, Computer and monitor can share one outlet, but I needed more. Especially in my bedroom. In my bedroom, there are three outlets. One is used for the air conditioner. One is behind a wardrobe/closet that is the entire length of the room (impossible for me to move) and the other is behind my bed. I found I was able to get at it, but only with extreme difficulty.

Earlier that morning, when I had taken the walk, I had noticed one of the vendors was selling power strips, I keenly took note of this immediately went there when I decided I was ready to let my American consumerism back into my life and was ready to buy shit. So I bought it. It was essentially a silent transaction, I took it off the rack and then handed him a 50 Yuan bill. He gave me 40 Yuan change. I wasn't sure how much an item such as this should cost, but 10 Yuan seemed fair. For those of you who are wondering, 1 USD ~= 8.5 Yuan. So a little over a dollar for a powerstrip seemed down right reasonable to me, although I have no idea whether I was being ripped off. After that I got up the courage to buy bread (2 Yuan), a ramen type thing (4.95 Yuan...seemed a little pricey) and a 1.5 liter bottle of orange drink (6.9 Yuan...also seemed a little pricey). But whatever. I had spent like 15 Yuan and had a dinner all set for myself. Too bad I went to bed before I even got a chance to eat it.

I am now getting ready to go to the supermarket for the first time with the intention of buying anything. Last time I went there, I was informed that you cannot bring backpacks in with you (WEAK!) so I essentially have to make the decision to go to the supermarket, come back with the food, and then go anywhere else I want to go. So I'm off, we'll see how this goes.

China: KFC Carrot Rolls

2004-09-04 5:39PM

Of no importance: The bucket of chicken they had bought for me came with half an ear of corn and a couple small bread stick sized rolls. The rolls had carrots in them. A regional difference in KFC I guess.

China: Guy Picking Flowers

I just happened to be looking out my window (into the wasteland between my house and the street that used to be a building) and there was a guy walking his dog through the brick piles. I didn't think much of it, but after I that sketchy 'pick-up' the day before yesterday, I kept an eye on him. He just walked calmly across the way, onto what used to be a basketball court. He then leaned down to pick cut a flower that was growing up in the seam between the two courts. Afterwards he walked a little further away and picked a few other flowers too. Maybe this whole isolated tower thing isn't so bad.

Check out a picture of him.

China: Classes

2004-09-03

Yesterday (thursday) after getting introduced to a bunch of teachers and getting a full tour of the school I suggested to Bill that I should sit in on some classes. He was a little suprised by my request, but also thought it might not be a bad idea. I couldn't believe that they suggest that I jump into teaching on monday without even seeing how a class is structured or the proficiency of the students I will be teaching. wow. So I sat in on some classes today. Two Junior 1 (~7th grade) classes and one Junior 2 class. The first class was taught by a young teacher I had met earlier in the morning. She is 22 and right out of University. Her english is pretty good (incredible for someone who has never left china) and she has a good rapport with the students who seemed eager to learn, although shy because I was in the room. Bill was the teacher of the second class. He seemed much more active with the students and trying to engage them, although they seemed even more shy than the first class. Both teachers while speaking would make mistakes, which is something I think is difficult to avoid in their situation, but still I think it is very difficult when students do not have teachers speaking correctly to them. But whatever, my english sucks too. The third class was with a Junior 2 class (8th grade). This teacher reminded me of a character out of a movie. She was only 44yrs old, but I couldn't get the image of a 50s style teacher out of my head. There was a clear power situation in the class, she was not abusive to the students or anything, but they knew she was in charge and were not very active as a result. They listened to what she said, responded, but never once in the class did someone look excited.

This class was also structured very differently. In the other two, the majority (80-90%) of the class was conducted in english. Chinese was only used when absolutely necessary to explain something to the students. This is the way I think languages should be taught. It may be a little difficult at first, but it means that the student becomes much more comfortable conversationally. The Junior 2 class was structured how I imagine older style language programs to be operated. It was translation focused. The teacher would say something in Chinese, the students would translate (together aloud). Lather, rinse, repeat. With every statement there seemed to be one, and only one, correct answer. Otherwise how would the entire class say it in unison? They were reading conversations out of a book, memorizing each half by rote. Thumbs down. I need to make sure not to do that.

So at the end of the day, I got my teaching schedule. I will be teaching thirteen classes here at the middle school. Seven Junior 1 classes and 6 Junior 2 classes. On wednesday, I will be teaching at the high school which is a bus ride away. I will have five classes there. So i will have two classes on monday, three on tuesday, five on wednesday and four on thursday and friday. Each class will have 50-60 students in it and last for 40 minutes. This will obviously be a challenge. I'm not sure how I will be expected to keep track of the names of 900 students (18 x 50) when I only see them once a week for 40 minutes, let along somehow track their performance.

All of the classrooms are indentical in layout. The students sit at paired desks in one of three columns. So there are six students per row and then nine or ten rows. It's pretty intense how dense it is. The classrooms have large windows, which stay open, on both sides of the classroom. There are blackboards on both ends and a chinese flag above the one at the front. There is a television in the corner, a speaker for the PA system and a water cooler/heater. (A little sidenote, I have one of these in my apartment. This is the dispenser for drinking water...one tap is room temperature and the other heated (for tea?). The problem with this arrangement is that when the device is actually plugged in, it heats the water which is above the hot water reservoir. I don't drink tea nearly as often as I drink just water, so the "cold" water is like pretty warm. I just leave the one in my apartment unplugged. End sidenote).

I'm very excited about teaching. I just feel my energy level rising just thinking about it. I think I have a lot to bring to the classroom. And I keep thinking about my German teacher, Dave Limburg and how his style for teaching was extremely effective...I need to emulate that. I really want to suprise the students on monday and capture their interest and attention. And really just inspire them to learn more. I'm thinking about coming in with speakers and playing them some music, I haven't yet decided what, maybe Cookie Monster singing C is for Cookie or something else from sesame street if I can download it before class on monday. Just to get them motivated and maybe, if I'm adventuresome, get them singing. Yeah, my singing sucks, but I think it would really help.

The on thing I am actually most concecrned with their is their pronounciation rules. They have a set of letters/symbols defined for all the sounds in the english dictionary. Much like what you would find in the dictionary showing the pronounciation of a word...except it's a different set of symbols. I'm not particularly familiar with what we use in america, I mean I can use out of a dictionary for pronounciation, but I certainly could not list all the different sounds in the language and their corresponding symbols. But add to the fact that the chinese (and probably others, who knows) use a different set of symbols and I'm fucked. Apparently all the students have learned them before...but it's something I'm going to be expected to teach them and I will definately need some aids to make that possible.

China: Drop Point

2004-09-02

So I looked out my window on thursday and happened to see someone pull up in the driveway space in front of the school. Then someone got out and started to walk towards my building. So I watched him. He went behind the last remaining pieces of a wall (behind for everyone else, I was probably the only person on earth who could see him) and he picked up a small black case (maybe 1ft by 6in by 3in) off the ground which had been lying against the wall. He then just turned around and walked back to the car which drove off. I think I may have just watched a dead-drop. I wonder what it was for. It's a bad picture, but here's the car driving away. And no, the exposure is not off bleaching out their license plate...it really was just blank white. Wierd.

Dialup in China

So I now have dialup access while I'm waiting for my DSL to be installed. It's not super-cheap, but it is certainly reasonably priced. I pay 4 yuan per hour. So like 50 cents/hr. I could get cheaper dialup if I registered or bought a prepaid card, but this works today and I can afford it. It's certainly cheaper than 30cents/min for phone conversations. But anyways, it's really easy:

Phone Number: 16300

Username: 16300

Password: 16300

That's it. In case anyone is curious, I'm in Changzhou, Jiangsu...I'm not sure if it works elsewhere in the country like Shanghai or Bejing, but I bet it does because it's probably run by the state telecom company. There are perks of having your phone company be you ISP and your cell phone provider. Things are sometimes easier.

But anyways, for the moment, I'm pushing through a few of my blog entries that I've written since I've gotten here. I'm waiting on some of them because they also have pictures and dialup is certainly not the best game for that. We'll see though, maybe I will just set it up overnight to send the pictures. This should mean that from now on, I will not go without internet for any length of time. Maybe a day or so, but not much more. Look forward to even more blog entries in the coming days.

Dead americans in iraq photos

Back in April I made a gallery for photos of dead americans returning from Iraq. At the time, there were only a handful of pictures that had entered the mainstream press. I thought I would leave open the gallery so that if anyone else found a photo that they could upload it. Soon after I wrote my entry, this guy Russ Kick got the results of a Freedom of Information Act Request. After appealing an initial denial, he got a CD with 361 photos on it. Since that main site is slow (5m hits/day) here are some mirrors: antiwar, exit and warblogging. So anyways, back to me. My iraq gallery has taken on a life of it's own lately. People have been uploading pictures like mad, and now there are something like 170 pictures. Almost all of the pictures seem to have been uploaded by non-american's or at least someone who is very sympathetic to the anti-american cause. I hadn't really thought about it too much until I read some of the captions which I think are not inaccurate, but just lacking sensitivity. A few examples:
"american soldier is sad in Iraq because his friend was killed" (link)

"americans suffering in iraq" (link)

"american soldier is afraid of death in iraq" (link)

The interweb is an interesting experiment in social interactions. I dig it.

Update December 2008:
Archive.org Cache of the Old Duckies.org Gallery

Last cool car milestone

So here is a picture of the rollover on my car not to 100,000 or anything boring like that, but to 123456. I guess I've driven my car like 51k miles since I got in in August 2001. 17K a year is a little high, but I do drive a lot more than most people honestly. Especially this summer.

Patriotic biker dude.

I took this on my ride last ride down to Greensboro. This guy was just worth remembering. I mean look at those flags! And the helmet! Oh and although you can't really see it, he also has two full sized flags off the back. One American flag, the other POW MIA. Way to express yourself.

China: Phone/TV

9/2/04 15:00

So I’m less than satisfied with the state of the phone/internet/television situation. At around 2:30 today (Thursday) they came and got my phone hooked up. Which is nice, although I don’t know my number, let alone how to dial out or in to it. The still have no internet here, which is super sucky, but I guess I will learn to deal. The cable tv is working, sort of. I get like 25 or so channels, but they are all fuzzy and the audio is useless on all but the first 3-4 channels. Luckily one, of those channels has music videos on it. They seem to be English language, but I don’t know if that’s all the time or just now. They just had Aqua’s cartoon heroes which made me feel a little bit like home, but the video that’s on now (a remake of ‘Mickey’ but somebody British) is downright awful. And now it’s Mr. Bean. I don’t understand this network. Now it’s back to being entirely Chinese. Fuck.

China Day 0-1: From Shanghai

Two guys were there to pick me up. One of them was in his early thirties while the other probably in his mid-twenties. The older one, Bill Williams (we will not think about the fact that if this were his given name his birth certificate would be William Williams) speaks English and is responsible for pretty much everything to do with me. The other guy, who I’m not really sure what he does, drove the car (a mid-size Buick sedan for those who are curious) and was named Mr. Chen. In Chinese, chen means money…so they wanted me to call him Mr. Money. I couldn’t do that without laughing, sorry.

So we left the airport and began to drive on a highway towards Changzhou. While Mr. Chen drove, I sat in the back with Mr. Williams (chuckle) and we talked. He had a bunch of questions for me about my family and about my trip, while I had a number of questions for him about the school and about china in general. As we were driving down the highway out of Shanghai (actually, the airport was half an hour outside the city as most airports are) there was some industrial/commercial development along the highway as well as some apartment buildings while were closer to the city. The billboards along the road were remarkably different from those you would find in America. Every single billboard was advertising something commercial or business oriented. I did not see a single advertisement which was focused at consumers (movies, television, appliances, consumer products, etc). I did not say anything about this because I’m not sure how well it would translate and it would require a decent amount of culture context to be relevant. But as I was discussing who had cars, it became obvious. The only people who had cars (besides taxi drivers) were business men. The billboards must have been targeted at them. Although I still wonder how many people traveling on that road are in the market for an electronic microscope (yes, there was an ad for one).

So as we were driving, Mr. Chen took the wrong exit, three times. Apparently he was trying out a different route and was having some difficulty. It did give me a chance to see how their tollbooth system worked. This particular road was setup with variable fees depending on how much of the road you traveled, like the New Jersey Turnpike or the Massachusetts Turnpike. The one difference though, is instead of using paper tickets, they used reusable smart cards. They were contact based cards (as opposed to proximity) which the toll taker swiped across a pad to read it. Then they would reuse the card for someone else entering the road. I found it interesting…it would be more expensive in the beginning but it would result in less waste…I wonder how cost effective it is. Also of note is the fact that on three occasions (two of the wrong exits and the correct exit), Mr. Chen backed up on the highway to either take the exit or read the sign before the exit. Yep. Highway, two lanes each direction and he was going in reverse. It was night and so there was essentially no cars on the road so it wasn’t unsafe, but just the idea made me really nervous. Apparently it is prohibited, but because it was late and there were no cops around it wasn’t a big deal.

So after finding the correct exit to take, a little way down the road, we stopped to get something to eat. I personally was not particularly hungry because of that lasagna I had on the plane…and because I had been eating off and on for 26hrs straight and I had done nothing to burn off any of those calories. So we pulled off at this rest area/exit sort of thingie…much to the surprise of my hosts, two of the three restaurants were closed. We ended up going to one that was upstairs. The meal we had was, well, over the top. We started with some cabbage and an omelet like thing (eggs have never been my favorite) which was followed up by a chicken with vegetables in a sauce that was a little spicy. And then was the soup. It was just a big bowl of soup with tofu and cabbage. Oh, and did I mention that there was an entire fish just chillin in there too? Later in the meal came some peas too. I tried some of everything it was all good, except as to be expected, I didn’t really like the egg thing. My favorite was actually cabbage, it was really tasty. To drink we had green tea and Bill and I had beers.

The beers themselves are worth a little discussion. First off, although Billy was heavily pressuring him to have just one glass, Mr. Chen adamantly refused to have any beer (he was driving after all). The beers we got were like 700ml (24oz) and we each got one. I can’t imagine getting served a tall boy in an American restaurant. One time I saw somebody get a 40 of Schlitz at Amigo’s in Greensboro (on a date no less) and that blew me away. The beer was just a generic light beer, nothing special. Actually on second thought, the beer did not warrant a discussion. Moving on.

I noticed a couple differences while at this restaurant. Firstly a large portion of the population smokes and when they do it pretty much anywhere. People smoked not only at the table, but actively while they were eating. Ick. Also, all of the lighting that I had encountered (all three restaurants, the convenience store, the bathroom, tollbooths, etc) was fluorescent. The quality of light is obviously not as important as the cost. I don’t have a problem with this idea in concept (why use energy and generate heat unnecessarily?) but in practice I don’t like the quality of light it provides. So after we finished we got up to leave…I noticed that Bill had left his cigarettes and grabbed them to give to him. He thanked me, and as we were walking out the door, one of the waitresses came running to give me my digital camera. Wow. I’m a fucking idiot, but as everyone keeps saying, “the Chinese are a very nice, caring people.” I don’t quite now how to take that, but it seems to be true in a bunch of odd ways.

So after dinner we got back in the car and drove the remaining hour or so to Changzhou. I ended up sleeping a little while in the car. So we arrived at the school, drove past the guard (unarmed) at the gate of the school and pulled up to my house. It’s a good sized house; I have the entire upper floor to myself. They built the building for the express purpose of housing foreign English teachers, although they haven’t had any foreign guests to fill it for the last two years. When we walked in, there was a beautiful spread of food out on the table: four types of bread, like 8 bananas and 8 apples, and bucket of KFC. Wow. So after a brief tour, I said goodbye to them and had the place to myself.

China: Address and such

Well, I'm pretty sure this will work, but I won't actually know until someone sucessfully sends me something (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Peter Tripp

Beijiao Middle school

12 Wanfu Road

Changzhou, Jiangsu Province

213002

People's Republic of China

So get those packages in the air so I can get them soon!

China: Day 0, Travel

So um, yeah. I’m in China. Everything with my travel went smoothly. No missed flights, no passport problems, no customs issues, just 31hrs of me moving half way across the world. I left the house at around 4am EST with Michael and Anson to drive to the Boston to catch my flight which was leaving at 8:10AM. The plane was only about half full, so I was able to move to the back and get an entire row to myself. So I slept for most of this flight. Off and on for probably about three hours out of the total five hour flight. My connection in San Francisco was relatively straight forward, although I had to ask someone about the transfer to the international terminal (down a flight of stairs to a shuttle bus).

After walking the length of the terminal, I found my gate at the very end. So with a couple hours to kill, I went back to a Mexican restaurant and had my last Mexican food for a year. Vegetarian Burrito, chips, salsa and a Dos Equis. I then decided that prospect of relying solely on airline food for my caloric needs over the next 13hrs might not be the wisest thing I’ve ever done, so I bought a slice of Lasagna which came with a nice Caesar salad. When I say slice, I was to impress upon people that this “slice” was eight inches by say about five inches. Needless to say, I was set for the flight…both meals.

The flight was relatively uneventful. I was sitting next to a girl from Cape Cod who was flying out to Shanghai to be with her boyfriend. She bought a one way ticket and doesn’t as of yet, have job lined up…I’m don’t think I could walk into a situation that blind. I mean, I had to take a leap of faith coming here…but I was trusting that someone else had taken care of everything that needed to be taken care of, not that I would be able to figure all of that out on my own. So we chatted on and off for most of the flight, which was cool. On the other side of me was a nice older Chinese man who spoke almost no English, but was very nice. He had this nifty little pocket dictionary thing that could also say English words out loud…cool! I wish I had one of those for Chinese, not that I would even know how to input the characters.

So we arrived in Shanghai on time and I walked off the plane to head towards customs. Before we got to customs, we walked past someone who was looking at everyone using an thermal vision camera. This way they could potentially stop anyone entering who was running a fever and would likely be sick. Smart folks these Chinese are. While waiting in line, I struck up a conversation with an American woman. She and her husband had come to china twenty years ago on a mission (shiver), after which he got a job in Shanghai and they were raising a family here. The two girls seemed relatively well adjusted, especially since they were being home-schooled while here. So after getting my passport/visa ok’d I walked downstairs to the luggage claim. I met up with what’s-her-face that I sat with on the plane and we got our bags together. I was all nervous because there was another customs station where there were x-ray machines and a bunch of customs officials that looked rather ominous. After voicing my fears of the coming customs search, a young woman who had overheard me just said: “if you don’t look them in the eye, you can just walk through. Don’t give them a reason to interrupt their conversations and you’ll be fine.” As I got closer I realized that no one was getting searched and the officials were really in their own little world. So I was walking behind my little cart thingie with my big suitcase, frame pack, carry on bag and my messenger bag as I was about to enter the rest of the airport…frightened that there would be no one waiting with a sign with my name on it, but there was someone with sign that said: “Tritpp Peter Harrington.”

I arrived safely

The entire trip was smooth. I apologize for the sparseness of this posting, I am making it from a shared computer. Internet/Phone access in my apartment is currently not working. Hopefully it will be up and running soon, but I don't know. My apartment is very spacious (Bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen and a wrap around porch. Very nice and like 50 feet from the school. More to come.

Sparse postings

As you may have noticed, my posting as of late has been very thin. In the last two weeks I've done a lot of traveling...somewhere in the range of 3-4 thousand miles. At the same time I've been preparing to leave for china, so I've been pretty stressed and just have things I need to take care of. Brainsoup has certainly not been my #1 priority throughout this process. But I haven't forgotten, and expect postings to pick up once I get to china...leaving in less than 48 hours...ahhhhh! But I'm excited. Again, soon the posting will pick up.

Vapor Alcohol

I came up with this like 6months ago. I suggested that you should be able to take alcohol vapor and inhale it...directly inserting alcohol into your bloodstream. I thought it inpractical, but possible. I was correct. Sketchy folks called AWOL: Alcohol With Out Liquid did it.

(from Engadget)

Smallville...waste of my life

I'm in the middle of watching my second smallville episode in a marathon on WB tonight. Ummm...yeah, I shouldn't tell people about this.

China Visa

I now have a visa to go to china with. It took like ten times longer than I had hoped, but it's a relief that it got done. Now I have to come to terms with the fact that I am going to china. Oh yeah, and buy a plane ticket.

Couple entrys since mentioning Garden State

I have gone like 4 entries without mentioning Garden State. I don't know what to do with myself. Oh, I could just mention that I went to see it in NYC again last saturday and it was great the second time too. Although spending 10.50 for tickets (twice) is definately the suck.

Back from another roadtrip

Another roadtrip for pete. A very very intense couple of days, but I am happy and unupset enough to fall asleep. Should be a good thing.

Visual Metaphors

Two subtle ads lube manufacturers. Too bad the KY ad is not real and the other ad is only outside of the U.S. Still very funny.

(KY Ad from AdRants via BoingBoing)

(Manix Ad from essays & effluvia via BoingBoing)

Want an iPod, but are poor?

I have quite a few friends who would love an iPod, but the $300 price tag is a little steep. Well, amazon has 15gig iPods for $236.54. That's as cheap as I've seen a new iPod in a long time.

If we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.

QOTD. From Edith Wharton

Garden State recognition

Last night, literally a minute before I got pulled over, I put on Frou Frou's Let Go that I've been raving about. My friend Alex got all excited because he recognized the song. He was all excited about the movie too and wanted to know where it was playing nearby. Hehe...I'm glad that someone else is as into random movies as I am. Too bad I had to tell him Boston and Hartford are the closest places that it's playing.

Roadside sobriety test... Peter 1, Cops 0

So I hung out with some old high school friends tonight. Friends that I haven't seen, honestly since graduation. We hung out, had a couple beers and played croquette. After some folks left, we decided to go out and have a pint at the Moaning Dove, a local bar with lots obscure beers. So we each had a beer there, and then left because they were closing. On the ride back through town, we passed a couple cops and after one followed me for a little while, I (unconciously) flicked the cigarette I had been smoking out the window. Apparently in Mass, that's a crime and so they pulled us over. Four guys in a car, at 1:30am. I had known since the beginning of the evening that I would need to drive home and had been pacing myself all along. So they after they asked for my license and registration and whether I'd been drinking, they asked me to step out of the car. I told them where I was coming from and that I had one drink there and two drinks before (I had 4 drinks before, but over three hours). They had me do the follow the pen with your eyes, walk along the white line heel2toe and the stand on one foot while counting to thiry. Honestly, the hardest part of the process was the counting..."one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...I'm bored, can we stop now...". So after a short conference with another cop, they decided to give me a breathalizer. I initially refused the breathalizer, requesting a blood test instead. To which he promptly responded with some half-truths about how I needed to be arrested before I could get such a test (at my expense). He also made the insinuation that I would have to take it at the police station, even if I refused here...conviently failing to mention that in massachusetts you never have to take such a test.

At this point I was 95% sure that I would pass such a test and I felt that I had secured a solid defense (him outright saying "your not entitled to a bloodtest") I took the test. And I passed. 0.058. Mass legal limit is 0.08. I was pretty sure that's about where I sat on the scale, but since I've never actually been tested, it was only a guess. I'm really proud of myself for accurate judging my consumption and tolerance for alcohol the whole night through. I wouldn't have had the beer at the bar had I thought I wasn't straight.

I win.

Rio Karma: First Impressions

So I got the Rio Karma that I bought from Amazon for $254 today in the mail. I am initially very impressed. It is smaller than an iPod and both the ethernet and USB connections seem to work. Transfers with USB2 are fast enough that I haven't really had to think about it too much. It takes me longer to organize my music and to clean up the tags than it does to copy. That's the way it should be.

Of course, I have a nack for doing things with tech toys that someone didn't intend me to do and the Karma is no exception. I found out that it is impossible to have the same song twice on the album. Designing a device, I might be tempted to make a similar assumption, but then you think about two exceptions to that rule: soundtracks and mix cds. I ran into my problem while trying to sync a mix cd that I had made and a Modest Mouse album. When I had made the mix cd, I just took the song directly from the album folder. When I went to sync the song the second time, in a status window it silently said: "Duplicate Song". This, in a window that automatically goes away when the transfer process completes. So you better watch it carefully when you are transferring anything that you might already have.

But...there is an exception to this rule. You may have the same song twice if they aren't physically the same file. I hadn't thought what I was doing would be a problem because I had transferred a coldplay song, once on the album and once on the garden state soundtrack. That worked fine. Or maybe it's because one is an OGG file and one is an MP3. This just pisses me off, because mix cds and soundtracks are a staple of my listening habits.

Otherwise, I am initially very impressed with both the interface on the device and with the software for managing/syncing on your computer. Both seem to be well designed and don't have too many pitfalls.

Update: I did some playing around. It does not care what the filename is. It is only concerned with the MPEG data being the same (ID3 excluded). My guess is that it uses a checksum/size combination to uniquely identify each song. So what I did was just renencode the song (agh...lesser quality!) so that the checksums would be different. Problem solved. Just watch out if you want to put two of the same file on a Karma.

No skin cancer - Becker's Nevus

The spot on my back that is a different color is in reality not cancerous. Yay. It's just a Becker's Nevus. Apparently Richard Gere has one too. I couldn't care less, but my dermatologist pointed this out in an attempt to make it seem normal I think. Or something.

Good Airplane Seats: SeatGuru

So I just stumbled across this site, SeatGuru.com where they have seat layouts for all the major airlines. They have notes about which seats suck (no recline, no overhead space) and which seats are awesome (extra leg room, seats in front can't recline, etc). Oh and they also have info about which seats have power outlets in them. Next time I'm booking a flight I will make sure to check this site while I'm picking my seat.

Back from my roadtrip

Yesterday I finished my extended roadtrip. 2100 miles on my car (all me driving). Time for another oil change. Plus another 800 or so shared with Shira in her car. I'm tired of highway driving now. But today I went out for an hour long drive through the hill towns. I loved every second of it. I'm not sure why I'm not tired of all driving, but there is just something so pure and deeply settling about speeding through the curves on roads that are literally in the middle of a forest. It gets me everytime.

I Saw Garden State

So I've been posting about Garden State a lot. I really enjoyed the trailers...enough so that I went to New York City to see it on opening night. (A good excuse to go see Joanna too). Now I want to see it again, or better yet, own a DVD of it. Although likely that will be impossible for at least another 6 months or more. Maybe someone will give it to me for my birthday (nudge nudge). I have the soundtrack too and like half of it is good, half of it kind of sucks. I guess you can't win them all. The movie was good, but god, I can't get enough of that song. Seriously though, when it comes to your town, go see it. Or if you see it in blockbuster in a year, rent it. It'll be worth it. If only so you can come back here and say: "Pete it fucking sucks your an idiot." instead of just complaining about how much I rave about it.

Frou Frou - Let Go

I've been listening to a song off the Garden State Soundtrack called Let Go by an artist named frou frou. I've listened to it more than a dozen times today. I'm not normally like this, but I REALLY like it. For the next week or so, I will leave it on the server, so feel free to get ~~the MP3 of it~~ (REMOVED 8/29) yourself. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Everytime I listen to it, I go through this incredible set of emotions... it sounds really cheesy, but it inspires me to be a better person and continue on trying to do good in the world. For serious. And lyrics too
Continue reading "Frou Frou - Let Go"

Every episode of This American Life

I just downloaded every episode This American Life that they have on their website. It ended up being 252 episodes (out of the 269 they've done) weighing in at 6.02GB. That's not too bad for ten and half days of audio. Too bad they are RealAudio and will take quite a bit of work to get them converted into something that I can use on a portable player. But rather than spend my time doing that now, I'm just going to burn the originals and convert them later. Maybe tommorow I'll have the time to sit down and burn these 9 CDs...it'll probably take me around an hour and a half or so. Ugh. I wish I had a DVD burner.

Update: There is a torrent on suprnova that has them all in MP3. Fuck me.

I support single moms t-shirt

Picture of the Day: Swimmer Head

(link from laura)

Garden State, Zach Braff's new film

Zach Braff, J.D. of Scrubs, has a new film coming out called Garden State. He wrote, directed and acted in it and it looks good. I'm hoping I might go to see a sneak preview on wednesday night in NYC. You should check out the trailer if you get a chance.

ASCII Art Porn Spam






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                   :.        (:::  .:::: : :      o ::)))))))
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 (    .-' ;;'-.-''' '':.        :             (((((:.  :((((
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I just got this in a spam message. Way cool. Notice that the nipple is not only red, but it has emphasis. Hahaha.

A Softer World - Three Comics aren't enough

Three comics weren't enough.

Comics from A Softer World. I live in awe. Oh and the people who create this comic, emily and joey have livejournals. The comics were stolen in an attempt to spread the word about an excellent comic. If you like it as much as I do, buy a book. If you like me more than you like the comic, buy me the book.

My digital camera rocks

So I like my camera. It's very cool, and the included panorama app is hot. It's super simple. This was a combination of five pictures I think. I also took a second panorama half way down my street, although it's not as cool looking as the first one.

Awesome school stickers

Apparently my mom bought something at follet today, and they gave her free stickers. And so she thought I might like them for using china. Forget china, I just love them.

So I have like 16 pages with 10 stickers each. Awesome.

Guilford got bigger...it wasn't just my imagination.

I knew guilford had gotten bigger since I first looked at them in the spring of 1999, but the actual figures suprised me:

"Guilford's total headcount enrollment grew by 68 percent -- from 1,255 in the fall of 2000 to 2,101 in the fall of 2003. Last fall, the college broke an enrollment record dating to 1965, and it set a new standard when 2,153 students enrolled in the spring. Typically, colleges and universities report the academic year's enrollment in the fall and experience a decrease from fall to spring."

(link from the Guilford College Alumni Beacon mailinglist.)

Nifty stick figure tiled animation

Check out the full page original or my mirror to get the full effect.

(from BoingBoing who got it from Horulated who got it from waxy who got it from B3TA...the full screen tile was taken from B3TA. Yeah. Or something.)

My Thinkpad is back!

So I was awoken this morning by my mom bringing the box with my thinkpad into my room. Awesome. Not only did they fix the two cracks that had developed in the case (as requested) but the tech also did another favor. I had also written a note asking if they would give me a replacement thumb screw to keep the hard drive in (it was lost before I bought the laptop from my brother) and also if they would give me a replacement trackpoint cap and the guy gave me two and saved me $10 + shipping. (thanks D Millor, whoever you are). I also looked into extending my warrantee as it will run out in three weeks. It would end up costing me $93.50/yr for up to two additional years. I think that's probably worth it, but I need to find out what sort of options I would have for service while I was in China. I know I could get it fixed there, but I don't know if I would need to ship/bring it somewhere. I'll call about that later on today I guess.

Chimp yawns are contagious too

I can't remember who I was discussing this with, but yawning has always confused me. Apparently Chimp yawns are contagious too.

(Link from BoingBoing)

Canon Powershot A75, my new digital camera

I decicded to get a digital camera. After looking at lots of reviews and sizing up the ammount of fake money (aka credit) that I have available, I decided I wanted to spend less around $300 on a camera/memory card. Having played with gabe's Canon Powershot A70 and knowing that he really likes it, I was really thinking about getting that or the model one step up, the Powershot A80. The A80 can take 640x480 videos and also can take pictures that are 4 megapixels instead of the A70's 3.2 megapixels. Although Digital Camera HQ says that amazon has the A80 for $250, amazon's price is really $280. Yeah. So apparently Canon recently came out with an updated version of the Powershot A70, the Powershot A75. And even though Digital Caerma HQ lists the price on Amazon as $195 and in reality their price is $235. So I decided that I would just spend $210 and get it at Butterfly Photo. So it should be here tommorow. I'm super excited and can't wait to play with it.

Falafel flavored chips

So the other night, at like 2 in the morning, mike and I decided to go shopping. While walking down the ethnic foods isle I saw something awesome and bought it: Bissli Falafel flavor wheat party snacks.

Note the "protect from sun" notice on the back. Oh yeah, and they were made and imported from Israel. Just in case you were curious, they do taste somewhat like falafel and have a texture similar to chow mein noodles.

More info on Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

Although the mapquest map is interesting, it doesn't tell me anything about where I'm going to be living. I just found a site with some basic information about Changzhou City and Jiangsu Province. Just in case other folks wanted to learn more about where I will be.

Google results emailed.

GoogleAlert is a service that will email you everytime search results change on google for you specified query. Although not too useful for me, it would be nice if you ran a website that depended heavily on search engine redirected traffic for revenue.

A Softer World - A Great Comic

Here are three A Softer World comics I've stolen for your viewing pleasure. I really like this strip, I highly recommend you check it out. I found many more than three comics that I liked, but I stopped trying to find good ones cause there were dozens. They only have new comics once a week, but there are archives to look through too.

(super thanks go to michael for the link)

QOTD: Black iPods like jesus

"I think the original iPods were black, and then were later changed to white, just like they did to Jesus."

(from defamer.com who stole it from gizmodo.com)

My computer "forgot" about 64mb of ram

So while looking at free space on my hard drive, I noticed that my hibernate file (where the computer saves the state of ram when the computer hibernates) was only 128mb. So I realized, my 64mb so-dimm must have slipped loose. I was right. That's why my computer has been so slow lately.

Great American Country and Country Music Television - Same video

Both GAC (Great American Country) and CMT (Country Music Television) are both playing "I Go Back" by Kenny Chesney. They were like 30secs off from each other. Ooops.

Going to china

So I have now confirmed my acceptance of an offer to go teach english in China. I still have to do a bunch of paperwork involving my VISA and they still have to approve part of my application, but I'm pretty much sure I'm going. It feels wierd because they have made me an offer, but yet they also still need my recommendation...it feels very out of order, but whatever, I'm excited.

So for those of you who I have not talked to extensively in the last week, this position is very new to me. I got an email about it first on monday and now they are in the process of getting my "foreign expert" materials in order. I'm glad someone else is doing all the real paperwork for me, cause honestly, I wouldn't know where to start. Essentially they send me all the material that I need to bring to the embassy to get my visa.

So here are the details of the position:

Salary: 4,000 RMB/mo (~$483/mo) All of the other positions I had been looking at were 2500-3000 RMB/mo.
Two semester commitment, return late June early July 2005.
Accomadations: Free rent in a furnished on campus, private apartment with:
- Bedroom and sitting room
- Private bathroom
- Air Conditioning
- Private kitchen
- School pays for utilities (electricity/water/gas)
- Free Local phone, Radio and TV
School provided bike
Reimbursed airfare (roundtrip)

All of this for 16/hrs a week of work. I'm unbelievably excited. If your curious, I'll be at the Xingchen Experimental School in Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Also, here is a picture of the school in case you were interested.

Cool Optical Illusions

This is old, but fascinating none the less.

The two squares, A and B, are the same color.

Check out the proof.

Also this image is fucking cool too.

Both the checkshadow illusion and the almond illusion came from BoingBoing. The almond illusion is one of many illusions created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka.
Continue reading "Cool Optical Illusions"

Rugrats All Grown Up

I just saw a cartoon on Nick that I think is really cool, All Grown Up. It's the kids from rugrats, and get this, their all grown up. They're teenagers now and I think it's actually a better cartoon than the original. I highly recommend you check it out, if you're into cartoons like me.

10 Partisan Myths

I just read an article in this weeks newsweek which was an excerpt of Running On Empty : How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It in an article 10 Partisan Myths. The statements seem very well grounded and just make sense. So I reproduced them here:

Demorats
1. Because federal benefits go to the poor, reform will amount to a shedding of our social safety net.
2. Even if they don't go to the poor, federal benefits foster equality by going mostly to lower-income households.
3. Federal benefits go to the elderly, who everyone knows are much less well off than younger Americans.
4. Social Security and Medicare are earned rights by contract; beneficiaries are only getting back what they paid in.
5. The future growth in the cost of senior benefits, whatever they may be, can easily be borne by younger generations.
Five Republican Tax Myths About Tax Cuts
1. Because the American people are overtaxed, they want and deserve our tax cuts.
2. OK, forget the long-term tax burden. Our tax cuts are still a sensible near-term means of stimulating a weak economy back to health.
3. Even when they don't deliver near-term stimulus, tax cuts make the tax code more efficient.
4. The critics just don't get it. What our tax cuts are really about is improving "supply side" incentives to work, save and invest.
5. Let's be honest. This is all about politics. In the long run, our tax cuts will force Congress to cut back spending and, with that, cut back government.

(Article is on page 44 of the July 12, 2004 Newsweek)

KFC Delivers, but only in New York City

Brian used to complain all the time while we were in Greensboro about how Kentucky Fried Chicken should deliver, but they don't. So I was very amused when I saw this while in New York City.

12 cent stamps don't exist

So I tried to send a thank you card to the people shira is living with, but yesterday I got it returned. Apparently, if you send a square envelope, there is a 12cent "Nonmachinable Surcharge". So they sent it back to me with the following sticker on it.

a. Square letters.

b. The height exceeds 6-1/8 inches, or length exceeds 11-1/2 inches, or thickness exceeds 1/4 inch.

c. The length divided by height is less than 1.3 or more than 2.5 (length is the dimension parallel to the address).

d. It has clasps, strings, buttons, or similar closure devices.

e. It is too rigid or contains items such as pens that cause the thickness of the mailpiece to be uneven.

f. It has an address parallel to the shorter dimension of the mailpiece."/>

So today I go into the post office to buy a 12cent stamp and re-mail the envelope. When I ask for one, they gladly sell me a 12cent sticker...apparently they don't sell a 12cent stamp. Nor do they sell a 49 cent stamp ($0.37 + $0.12). Silly. Very silly.

my IBM Thinkpad T21 going in for service again

So I broke my IBM Thinkpad (Thinkpad T21, 2647-4BU) again a while back. I cracked the case on the right hand side by the hinge. It's very similar to break that occured last summer: where while sitting with it open it just want CRACK and broke. This time was a little less dramatic, but still the same sort of thing. I've been putting off getting it fixed for a while now, but I just called IBM and box is on its way. I really like the support services IBM has. This was totally painless. I called, described the problem, waited while the guy did some stuff on the computer and that was it. No hold time, no fighting with someone, no paying shipping. I call, a box shows up the next day, I pack up the box, and the laptop comes back two days later. Unbelievable. Last time I did this I ended up talking with the airborne express guy at length about this whole process and he said he's seen the laptop come back next day (more than once!). That means my laptop goes out, ibm gets it the same day, fixes it and sends it back to me. 24 roundtrip service? Un-fucking-believable. Although I'm just excited knowing it'll only be gone for 48hrs at most. IBM thinkpad laptops may be expensive, but quality construction, a three year warantee with service like this makes them hassle free. It's too bad that my warantee expires on the 15th of August. I don't know what I'll do after that.

Justice, Sweet Justice

Brynne's luggage got delivered

Brynne (and Sarah and Megan) had checked luggage lost while flying. Not lost, but it just didn't make it on the plane with her. She had it delivered to my house, because she had no idea where she would be staying on campus (or even which college, HA!) It was interesting. It was just this guy with an SUV who showed up with her bag. Some independant contractor. He was cool, but talked a little much. On the phone and in person. I felt this wierd bond with him though...somehow like he knew me. It was wierd. But it got me to thinking, I could totally do that on the side or on weekends when I was in between work. Work doing delivery stuff? But not just pizza's or in the same location. It might be kind of cool. Just a thought. Hopefully I won't need think too hard about it as I have send my resume off to a couple dozen places in the last few days. A handful to some private schools, 4-5 jobs at google (i can dream, can't I?), 2 jobs at fedex and a dozen or so that I found through careerbuilder.com. There was one promising one, 45-70k + up to 20k in bonuses. For something I am overqualified for. I'll cross my fingers.

It's officially the 4th of july

I hear some fireworks, little ones, in the background. Cute. 12:03. Time for the celebration to begin. Too bad I don't have much to be proud of.

Happy Today, Happy Tommorow...a mix

I made a new mix cd, check out the track listing at ArtOfTheMix or check out the images of the back cover that shira posted on her LJ.

GMail mailto link thingie, G-Mailto

I just found an little application called G-Mailto that lets you click on mailto: links in web pages and launch a new compose window in GMail. Pretty slick. Also slick is the cross-platform Mozilla extension GMail Compose that lets you do the same thing, but just from Mozilla, Firefox or Netscape and on any platform.

Update: Today it stopped working for me. Hopefully they will update and fix them sometime soon.

A day at the airport

So here Iam, chillin at Logan airport, waiting for brynn, sarah and megan. Their flight was supposed to arrive at 2:30. I was worried, because I slept in a little bit and ended up not leaving until like 1:00. I figured they would land and get their luggage and I would pick them up. Everything would work out fine and dandy. Of course, that would be if their plane was on time (Sidebar: there is the cutest kid standing net to me...a little like 5 year blong kid with big glasses reading a mad lib and loving every second of it. Oh mad libs...) which it wasn't. While I was waiting in a fake parking spot (behind a bunch of cars that looked like they were waiting in queue for something, but were really parked with their drivers just sitting there just like me) I watched the downpour change from super-size raindrops to hail. That is when I realized that their plane would not be landing on time.

So here it is 3:45, and while I was writing this I they showed up. And brynn brought the palm I had forgotten in Greensboro...I'm very glad to have it back. Awesome. So while I was sitting here with my laptop open I decided to slide in my wireless card to check and see if there was wireless available. Unsuprisingly there is, and also unsuprisingly it costs money. 7.95 for 24 hours. Ouch. I guess if I was going to be here for like an hour or more (and I had a job/money) I might consider it. But something else that's funny is that they allow DNS traffic to go through. Which got me thinking about that paper I saw recently about using DNS as a transport method for other things. Although they talked about using it to do pushes of Knoppix discs or for SSH. The thing that would be more useful to me would be to be able to use it to send emails or push blog entries. I could publish blog entries via email anyways. So I'm thinking about maybe writing an application that would allow you to do this sort of thing. I guess you would need a specially patched dns server to handle and then additionally some sort of client. I could imagine it would make the most sense to make it act as an smtp daemon. I wonder if there is a standardized xml like method for posting blog entries or such. Like there is with RSS/RDF/Atom for reading them. If there isn't, there really should be.

Hmmm...I didn't think about it, but earlier while I was waiting I should have LJ'd by phone. Just to have an excuse to use it.

But anyways, I'm done now. This post is back dated to when I created it. (4:06PM)

Bueno Y Sano at Boston University is closed

I was sadly informed of this by amy while in boston today. Then later, I saw with my own eyes. Sniff. At least they're still her in amherst.

Guys gone wild DVD!

We've all seen Girls Gone Wild, but now soon you'll be able to buy Guys gone wild! Alright! Pre order at Amazon.

(from Fark)

Diet sugar makes dieting harder

It turns out, that consuming diet sugars makes it harder for the body to judge calories intake. Maybe I should cut back on drinking all that crystal light.

That "The Who" song with the cool intro...Baba O'Reilly (Teenage Wasteland)

So I knew this song. I knew it was by the who. I knew it had a cool intro. But I couldn't think of the name of it. So I googled. And then I googled some more. I googled for something funny, "best intro ever" synth "the who" and it gave two results. One was a dead link, the other listed the title of the song I wanted. Baba O'Reilly. Awesome.

Although Amazon has WMA and Real samples for the first five tracks of the album, I use walmart's music store more often for finding songs because they have MP3 sample of every track on the album. Yipee, I found my song.

My litter brother does have morals

Sometimes I wonder, but ocassionally things are cleared up for me. Tonight, I drove my brother to go get a soda/chips from the local convience store (Cumberland Farms). While I was sitting in the car, I noticed that he was in/out very quickly, but didn't think much of it. I commented on how little time it took, but eh, whatever. So like two hours later, mike comes back into my room and says: "Hey, I didn't pay for my stuff before at Cumby's." So we drove back and he paid his $1.50 for the chips and a drink. To michael, tonight I dedicate a "good works". Congrats michael.

Fried dough is better than fireworks

Last night I went to the fireworks in Easthampton. They were ok, but for most of them I was waiting in line to get fried dough. Honestly, fried dough is one of my most favorite things in the world. Next weekened I'm considering going to the the Amherst fireworks early, getting fried dough, and then leaving.

I went for a hike today

I went for a hike with some friends. It was all sorts of fun. It felt to get up in the morning and actually do something physical (especially if morning is 11am . I really need to start doing more physical activity. I just feel like I've accomplished something after hiking or biking somewhere. Oh, and the excuse to have baguette and brie with brownies for desert...not to bad neither.

Pour that perfect pint, hands free

"A Caledonian University student claims he has made an important breakthrough in how to pour "the perfect pint" during Euro 2004." I want a pint pouring machine.

(link from BoingBoing)

Nickelback = The suck

Although amy and cam told me about it, somehow listening makes a stronger impression than secondhand stories. But anyways: imagine two songs, by the same artist, played over each other...one in the left speaker, one in the right. What would happen? Try with Nickelback or Linkin Park. The result is the same. Well, the same as either song individually. It's pretty hard to tell the difference.

(thanks for the heads up cam)

I'm on my way to a new CMS

So, I really am going to write my own blogging software. I've spent a couple hours already today laying out the db structure. I did it initially in visio and have put it into postgresql already. No one cares (except maybe gabe) but I made a PDF of the visio diagram of the db structure. Next: learn smarty.

I reverted

Yeah, I got tired of trying to make Blog:CMS work. It's just a hassle all around. I fucking hate nucleus and I'm going to write my own software now that doesn't suck. Or at least sucks in ways that I know, rather than Nucleus just acting wierd as shit.

Dog Toy or Marital Aid

Can you tell the difference between a dog toy and a sex toy? I thought I could, but I only got 7 out of 14 correct on the Warm-up Round and on the Difficult Round actually fared better getting 11 out of 14.

(link from fleshbot who got it from GetSwank.)

My first ATT Wireless bill came today

And boy am I pissed. Let me see if I can begin to explain why I'm upset about my bill:

I got my plan on June 9th, and the billing cycle ended on June 14th, so everything I'm getting is prorated. Just thinking in terms like this is hard.
I got three services included "free" for the first month. Unlimited text messaging, 1mb mMode data and the "safety package" (i think it's like AAA). Rather than say not charging me for these services, it charges me for them, and then elsewhere on the bill it gives me a credit for them. Sounds ok, except that they prorated the billing of the services. This means that this bill is lower than I would expect it to be because I get the credit now, pay for the services later (next month). Unless you start your plan on the 15th of a given month, this means your first bill will be smaller than it should be and your second bill will be higher than it should be.
Because the 1mb mMode is prorated, I only get part of the 1mb (5/30 days = 1/6, 1/6 * 1mb = 166KB. Of course, I played with the data a lot when I first got the phone, that what you do with new toys. And so I went over 99KB. And at $.01/KB thats a buck. (They credited this to my account)
In examining my bill closely, I noticed that there was an extra section..."Data usage for (732) 939-9951." Well, being as that's not my phone number, nor do I have a seperate line on this account I was a little worried. When I asked them what this was they were like "I'm not saying it doesn't say that on your bill, but I don't see that on my screen." Apparently they only saw the 4KB usage in a seperate area. She then half muttered under her breath something about me faxing her a copy of the bill so that she could see it. So accordingly I got stern with her real fast. "If y'all send me a bill that's incorrect, you should have a copy of said bill, and it is not MY responsibility to prove to you what your charging me for." They're "getting back to me" on that. (And BTW, I called the number and it's a pager, no name.)
On the service agreement from my ATT Wireless dealer, they wrote that I would be getting "Unlimited 1st Month 2-Way Text" which they notated as costing $4.99. $4.99 for unlimited text seemed reasonable and in fact I was sure I was going to keep it. Of course that isn't the case. It is a combination of two things. When you sign up for any text messaging plan your first month you get unlimited messaging. So I was being signed up for the $4.99/mo 100messages plan and getting the first month unlimited, but still paying $4.99. Ah, I understand now. It's about as clear as mud.
So I had asked about whether Instant Messaging was considered text messaging or as part of my data plan and the answer I recieved was one that I didn't expect: all incoming text messages (SMS or IM) are free and all outgoing messages are considered the same...10cents each or as part of your plan (like my 100 for $5) until you go over. Sounds very cool, except I'm pretty sure it's not true. ATT Wireless has a mMode usage estimator on their website. One of the questions is how often you "use Instant Messaging to chat with friends and coworkers." Why would I need an mMode data plan if IMs come out of my text messaging allotment? Because it doesn't -- they don't. Although I have yet to get a straight answer on this, I'm pretty sure both the sales rep and the support rep were both wrong in assuming that IMs and SMSs cost the same. Just to give you an estimate, based on the internal counters, it takes like 10Kbyes to sign in and get your buddy list and then sign off.
The 1.75 "Regulatory Programs Fee". Sounds like a tax, doesn't it? Nope. From the bill: "THE $1.75 REGULATORY PROFGRAMS FEE HELPS TO FUND AT&T WIRELESS COMPLIANCE WITH VARIOUS GOVERNMENT-MANDATED PROGRAMS SUCH AS E911, NUMBER POOLING, AND LOCAL NUMBER PORTABILITY WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE IN YOUR AREA. IT IS AN ADDITITIONAL MONTHLY CHARGE CREATED, ASSESSED AND COLLECTED BY AT&T WIRELESS. FOR MORE INFORMTATION PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.ATTWIRELESS.COM/RPF/". They do identify what is, I'll give them that, but this is one of those hidden charges. (Note: California is starting to regulate this sort of thing.)
So after calling customer service and asking them about the SMS/IM cost thing, I decided I should get an answer in writing by sending ATT Wireless an email (half way down the page). Luckily, they've made that impossible too. (screenshot)

All in all I am very unhappy with ATT Wireless right now. I feel like they have a number of manipulative business practices and I find their billing to be confusing and intentionally misleading. I'm not happy with them. Although I'm not sure I will leave them. I still have another 16 days to decide.

Awesome toilet

A bathroom with one way mirrors on the outside. Cool.

(link from BoingBoing.)

Hundreds of messages and no mail

I checked my mail for the first time a few days. I was sadly disapointed. There was not a single non-bulk/personal message in my inbox. No body loves me. Or more likely, no body uses email anymore...it's so...20th century.

Free TV Listings

For a long time now I've been referreencing TVGuide Listings to see what's on television, but I've always found their site to be lacking in features and just generally not very user friendly. (Like the fact that it shows me all the digital cable channels I don't get as well as HBO, Cinemax, etc) So I recently stumbled across TitanTV. Super cool, free tv listings. (Warning, just like with TVGuide, you need to sign up to get listings) And if I ever end up buying a video capture card for my computer, it will also let me one click set a PVR app to record it. Very cool.

New email address and GMail invites

So I decided I could part with $1 for a gmail invite. You can pick them up for as much by searching ebay for "gmail". I'm kind of excited because I fucking hate the email service I've been using for the last 2 months or so with SpyMac. It has become abundantly clear that email is one of those things that you should leave to professionals...I tried to setup my own mail server with dbmail, but I failed miserably. The solution that spymac is using is far worse. But anyways, I digress. I'm not sure what I'm going to make my username@gmail.com, but I was thinking of something fun and rememberable. But maybe just notpeter or something similarly weak. Now that I think about it though, I really want a new alias. I want it to be something completely unique. That is, I want to be able to use it with Yahoo!, AIM and Ebay and every other time I need an alias. So I need to come up with something semi-unique, but also at the same time rememberable. I've had the same email address since I was in 8th grade. That was 1994. And I've really gotten tired of spelling out poboxes.com for people. They seem to have trouble with it.

If anyone has any ideas for a new alias (petree is OLD) that might possibly stand the test of time, comment below. If someone actually comes up with something good enough for me to use, I will buy/give them a gmail invite.

(link from slashdot.)

Back from my roadtrip

So I'm back from my roadtrip. Maybe it's time to get a job now...or at least sell all my useless shit on ebay for money. Me being back means that updates to brainsoup will become more common/regular again. Anyone looking to get in contact with me, I am in amherst: give me a call.

Happy fathers day

Let me begin by saying: "Happy Fathers Day Dad!"

But anyways...I was in the grocery store today, and I happened to walk through the card section. Holy crap. There were like 25 people all looking for fathers day cards. Many people buying 2 or more (cause each child needs to give their father a seperate card...yay consumerism!). Additionally there were all sorts of children running around screaming and grabbing cards. It reminded me that I am happy that I don't have kids. Although it was cute to her a mother say to her son: "You like that card? Ok, you can give daddy the bob the builder card."

Record in telephone pole

The awesome power of a tornado demonstrated A 33rpm plastic record blown into a telephone pole. The NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Adminstration) photo gallery has some interesting pictures...although most of them are low quality.

Odd text message

I just received a very odd text message.

"WV12ST ST= (400, "Wireless Village must start with WV.")" It came from "+982004" which I think is like a system address...because I got a message from them before when I tried to use Yahoo! messenger and it text'd me telling me to try again in June because it wasn't up and running yet. I think it is likely related to the MobileIM i have on my phone. I think it's an error message associated with AIM, which can run over SMS...although usually I think it runs over GPRS. It's just kind of funny. I wonder if it is related to the fact that it took me three tries to logon today.

Killing lightning bugs

I really like lightning bugs. I think they are awesome. While in MD I was outside at dusk and saw thousands of them. They were everywhere. Every foot or so, another bug. Awesome. But now that they are in my room her in NC I don't like them. I was all settled down ready to sleep and then I felt an itching on my leg...when I scratched it I was unpleasantly suprised to realize it was a bug. So I flicked it away as I spazzed (like you do when you finds bugs on your skin in the dark) and then it flew around the room glowing and such. I was ready to leave it at this, but it started dive bombing me. Which is somehow very disheartening as you see a glow flying towards you and then after it has become black again, feel something land on your shoulder. After three creepy interactions with it, I decided it needed to die. As so it did.

Update 10mins later...there is another one in the room, its creeping me out too.

Keyboard woes

So the other day I tried to help Shira's friend Margie out with a computer problem. After she installed a Logitech Cordless keyboard and mouse, her internal laptop keyboard/mouse no longer worked. The keyboard/mouse would work until I got until windows (like in the BIOS and at the boot menu)... I didn't know what to do. I assumed that it must be a driver issue or something else similar to that, but after unplugging all external USB devices and restarting, I was not so sure. It's confusing as hell. It's been a long time since I a problem that stumped me like this. It's an old Dell laptop (Celeron, probably ~400-500mhz) running windows 2000. I bet I could fix it by reinstalling windows, but that is such a terrible solution. It really bothers me when I can't fix stuff.

I don't like dogs

So while staying at Shira's my dislike of dogs was reaffirmed. They had two...one old and chill and one young and fiesty, both female. The young one was continually flipping out and the chill one would just suddenly start crying sometimes. They are nice as companions, but honestly, they are just too high maintenence.

Driving woes

I got flipped off today while driving. And I swear, I wasn't using the laptop...I just didn't check my blindspot...I'm not sure what was wrong with me, probably that I am just tired or something. It just didn't feel good because as I went into the lane I heard someone honk and when I looked in the rearview mirror there was a woman in an Audi giving me the bird. How can you apogize to someone car to car...maybe it's time to buy that Nokia cell phone with the message writer...

Cool Cool Air Conditioning

I got my AC fixed...kind of. I know I really need to fix the leak in the evaporator, but when they did the diagnostics last summer they noticed that my compressor was rattling some. It likely will need to be replaced. Rather than replace the evaporator and then later when the compressor blows and spews molten metal throughout the system replace it again, I've chosen to just pretend it's not an issue and let them add freon. It will get me through the summer and cost me $82 instead of around $1000, so well, it's my only option for AC at this point in time.

Peter continues his GSM unlocking streak

This morning I unlocked Amy's Cingular Nokia 6340i. So now we can interchange our SIM cards between our phones. Yippee. Do you have a Nokia cell phone with Cingular, ATT Wireless or T-Mobile? I want to unlock your phone. I enjoy it. I can remote unlocks too if you don't live in MA or in NC.

Note: This offer only applies to actual friends of mine in real life...if I've never seen your face, don't ask me to help you.

Peter - 1, ATT Nokia 3595 - 0...UNLOCK

So I went and got an ATT Wireless phone...I chose the Nokia 3595. It's not the best phone in the world, but honestly, I don't need it for that much. Although it can do AIM/ICQ/Y! stuff, I will rarely, if ever, use that. So very soon after I got my phone, I decided that I really should unlock it. Not because I had any particular need for an unlocked phone, but just because it seemed like the right thing to do. So with the this tutorial I was able to do everything.
Continue reading "Peter - 1, ATT Nokia 3595 - 0...UNLOCK"

Finally going to buy that phone

So I finally am going to buy that phone. But instead of getting the Sony Ericsson T616 I'm going to get a Nokia. Although I really want the 6820, but instead I realized I should save the $200 and just get a 3595. I'm excited.

Beastie Boys - To the 5 Boroughs

The new Beastie Boys album, To the 5 Boroughs is hot. I highly recommend everyone who is remotely a BBoys fan pick it up. It'll be out in a week. Make sure you don't forget.

I'm really tired.

I stayed up really late last night, but that's not the entire reason I'm tired. This morning at 7:20, my mom called while my little brother was in the shower and she woke me out of a sound sleep. I hadn't been sleeping that well up to that point (uncomfortable, waking up, etc) and so after this point I was unable to go to sleep again. I think I might take a nap soon. I've been putting it off until I am actually able to sleep (because I'm so tired).

Smile

I'm not just giddy...I can't remember a time when I've been this happy. It's unbelievable. I'm so happy I'm unable sleep.

Survey finds that most people don't even know what carbs are

It's not a great survey, but most people are retarded and don't know what carbs are, nor how many carbs are in common foods.

I'm tired of blogging

I'm tired of blogging. Not specifically the of writing entries and such, but more that I feel like I could be providing better more lasting information in a different format. I'm currently working on writing a life-logging software instead. We'll see. It might take a while.

Honey mustard chicken sicilian pizza.

Yum

John Kerry is a Douche Bag But I'm Voting For Him Anyway

John Kerry is a Douche Bag But I'm Voting For Him Anyway.

(link from Joanna)

The internet is inbred

I was doing meta-moderation on slashdot and I got a comment that linked to one of my blog entries.

I'm happy

No need to explain why. But I'm giddy like a school girl.

I love thee fortune -o

Somewhere in DOWNTOWN BURBANK a prostitute is OVERCOOKING a LAMB CHOP!!

Bluetooth speakerphone and display in your acura

I just saw an ad for the Acure 3.2 TL. Apparently it has built-in bluetooth -- as a speakerphone and an in-dash display of caller ID info. Very slick, and very future proof. (Unlike a Honda Accord I test drove once that had a built-in analog cell phone, the ones with the huge handset...)

Drug testing for Ultimate Frisbee

First it was chess, now Ultimate Frisbee...what next, drug testing for video gamers?

I want my vacation

I just saw an ad on television for iwantmyvaction.com. You can check out the tv spot yourself. I am continually reminded why I want to move to another country. I mean seriously, Canada gets twice the vacation we do AND they have nationalized healthcare. Not fair.

Ready for the end of democracy?

"HR 3920: To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court" Go ahead. Read the full text of the bill. I wonder if Congress could overturn the Supreme court declaring this bill unconstitutional. Wow. Anyone who took a high school civics course can understand how retard this is...how did these 12 congressmen get elected? Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

(from POE News)

iPod spoof...iRaq

10,000 Volts volts in your pocket, guilty or innocent.

(link from BoingBoing)

Unlock GSM phones

I've been looking at getting a cell phone lately. One of things that I know I want to do once I get it is unlock the phone. Normally when you buy a phone you can't move it between providers...like if you buy a phone with ATT Wireless you can't use it with Cingular, even though there is no technical reason you couldn't do it. So all you need to do is have it unlocked. Although there are shops in NYC and every european city that do this, the rest of us can use the internet. This article in Popular Science is a simple introduction to it. They even provide links to places where you can get unlock codes for most Nokia phones online for free.

I lost my wallet

So I lost my wallet. Michael and I were down the shore so we could wash windows (Money!) and decided to go play in the park down the street. Except for some kids who kept hogging the tire swing, we had a good time. Oh and I tore my pocket off and my wallet fell out. I realized this and picked up my wallet off the ground and mike and left the park. At some point later on the day though, I took out my wallet and instead of putting it back in one of my front pockets I think I must have put it back in the bottomless pocket. I lost everything. Although I can replace the debit/credit cards and my license, I lost like $80 cash and $50+ worth of giftcards. Grrr. Well, these things happen I guess.

Futuram Panoramas

I know not all of you are cartoon dorks like me, but I think these stitched futurama panoramas are really cool.

(from BoingBoing)

U.S. War on Iraq? Blame Iran.

Ahmad Chalabi, a consumer of billions of U.S. Dollars for "intelligence" provided almost entirely false information. Well, it turns out his "security chief, Araz Habib, was wanted by Iraqi and coalition authorities for alleged links to Iran's intelligence service." Yep. Likely the guy who we were using for intelligence has close ties to the Iranians. Why might the Iranians want us to go to war in iraq? I have no idea.

Massachusetts has cut more state funding per student than any other state in the past two years.

Massachusetts has cut more state funding per student than any other state in the past two years. Read more about it at goodschools.org. Those stupid bitches.

Threat level twister

Oh, that's how they choose the threat level.

(link from POE News)

Too much gum in london

I remember while I was in Germany, I had some friends in London and they were talking about how authorities there were considering requiring people to be of age 18 to buy gum. Yes chewing gum. They were doing this because there was so much gum on the streets. I didn't believe that it was a problem until I went to visit and saw streets literally cover in white spots. It was gross. So there is now a different approach to this...they are putting up posters with celebrity faces for you to stick your gum on. Fun.

(BBC News Article originally linked to from BoingBoing who got it from Ben Hammersley who got it from 2lmc Spool.)

Gay Marriage in Mass

Congratulations to all same sex couples. Today you have won an incredible civil rights victory.

(image from msnbc and another seven from nytimes. Other coverage by WP, NYTimes and Boston.com.)

18 Hours of Sleep ain't so bad

I've been deprived of sleep lately. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep (8hrs) in almost a week. Also between wednesday night 11pm and sunday afternoon 3pm I've driven like 1300 miles, all but a handful while I was alone. From NC to MA and then a round trip of MA to NYC and back is a lot of driving. So yesterday afternoon after getting back from NYC, I just went to sleep at 3:30PM. I sleep till 4:00AM. I got up for a little over two hours and then slept again from 6:10AM till 11:40AM. So in the last 24 hours I've slept for 18 hours, and been awake for only 6, 3.5 of which I was driving. At least I feel refreshed now.

Mr Wizard on DVD

I remember many an afternoon watching old episodes of Mr Wizard on Nickelodeon. Apparently select episodes are available on DVD. Awesome.

(link from gabe)

Free wireless in Bryant Park is hot

So I'm just sitting here using the free wifi in Bryant Park. I'm here in NYC for an interview that I have in a couple of hours about teaching English in Japan, but I got here early just to make sure I could find everything and all. Too bad I'm incredibly tired...maybe I shouldn't have 13 hours home from NC (11pm to noon), stayed up that day, and then left for NYC the following day. That combined with staying up till 2am last night surely didn't help. But anyways, free wireless rocks...I wonder where the access points are. The whole area is pretty much just trees, without anything else higher than a few feet above the ground. My only guess is that are using the lampposts that are on the edge of the park. From where I am sitting I am seeing four bryant park APs (two with the SSID bryantpark.org and two with the SSID BP-PKRR...the former being Cisco APs, the latter Intel), so I guess they could put them pretty much anywhere. Amusingly, there are 26 other wireless signals bleeding down to where I am sitting. If you want to see what they are, just check out this screenshot of netstumbler. Wireless is cool. But free wireless is awesome.

Leaving Guilford College and Greensboro behind

Leaving Guilford is a little sad for me. I've now moved everything out of my apartment and it's official, not only am I graduated, but I'm totally done with college. I just finished cleaning up my laptop and totally disassociating it from the Guilford network (Drive mappings, printers, network shortcuts, etc). I'm also getting the chance to finally organize my documents and my desktop which is nice. When I get home I will likely reinstall windows, it's been six months, I think my computer could use it. I also will be needing to send it back to IBM anyways because the righthand rear of the laptop case is cracked. Again.

But anyways, I'm currently homeless. Well sort of. I have just about everything I own packed up in my car and am crashing at a friends house for a couple nights before I drive back up to Mass. I'm simply amazed at the sheer quantity of stuff that I own. I miss the days when everything I owned would fit nicely into the trunk and backseat of my car. Of course now I have some additional useful things (tv, vcr, dvd, ddr pad, etc) which I didn't have when I came to school, but when I get home I think I'm going to go through a bunch of the stuff I own and really decide whether I need it or not. Of course the humor of this whole situation is that even with all the stuff I own, none of it is getting me on the internet as there is no phone or internet connection at their house (yet). I had to write this entry offline and then I will post it tommorow (5/10/04) if I get a chance. Of course, the one thing I was looking into buying before school got out was a new cell phone. So I could get on the internet from anywhere. Ah, the humor.

Guess who graduated college?

Me.

How to cut a pineapple

Joanna got her mom to buy a fresh whole pineapple and the other day we decided to eat it. As it turns out, amongst the five of us who were there, none of us had ever cut up a pineapple. The only way I had done it before was while Gabe and I were at Woodstock 99 and then we used this cool slicing device. So we looked it up on the internet and Delmonte had a nice colorful set of drawings describing how to do it. After some more searching we also found instructions from hormel on how to create nifty Pineapple Boat.

Last exam in one hour forty minutes

I have my last exam at 8:10PM this evening. That is only 1:40 away. Then I'll be done. Scary.

What DVD do I want.

My dad is going to get me a DVD for my birthday. Any DVD I want. I'm not sure what I should get. If you could have one DVD, what would it be? I'm terrible at thinking about these sorts of things, so help me come up with something...here's a couple preliminary ones I came up with. (I hope this looks nice for everyone, it's a new css layout for captioned pictures.)

Fog of War

Lost In Translation

Swingers

Royal Tenenbaums

Chasing Amy

The Thomas Crown Affair

About a Boy

Wag the Dog

Ooops -- Broken condom

This is part of an awesome postcard campaign by Marie Stopes (an international planned parenthood like organization):

WokBoarding Rocks! (Wok Tobogganing too)

This morning BoingBoing pointed me to a video put up by chiseen.com of some folks WokBoarding. You might ask what is WokBoarding? It is sliding down moving sidewalks or escalators while sitting in a large wok! Check out the video.

(local video mirror)

HarvardPilgrim.org doesn't support Opera

So I'm sick. So I went to the Harvard Pilgrim website searching for a local doctor. Luckily they a little Find a Doctor app. Off course, if you go to that webpage using Opera it redirects you to here which says "You need to upgrade your browser. In order to provide the highest level of service possible, ProviderLookup Online requires Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator 4.0 or above." Of course, if I fake my agent to make them think I'm running Internet Explorer everything works fine. Forcing clients to run certain browsers is so 2000. I thought most people had gotten over it.

Sick, day 3, but no strep throat

Well, the big reason I haven't posted in a number of days is because I've been sick. Sunday evening, I brought Amy home after leaving in the middle of a peformance because she had a really high fever. Unsuprisingly, by late monday night/early tuesday I started to feel like I might be coming down with something. When I woke up almost 8 hours later I felt like I wanted to die. So since then I've averaged 16hours+ of sleeping a day. Today I finally decided to see a doctor to make sure I didn't have strep or anything. So this morning I got up at 8am, to hand in a paper (due at 9am) and afterwards decided to go down to the health center. I had called before I left and they had a message saying they opened at 9am. When I arrived there, there was a note on the table saying that the health center would be closed wednesday afternoon, all of thursday and all of friday. They provided no explaination. Good job guys. So I found a doctor through my insurance's website (see gripe about this) and went to go see them. Of course, since my car is out of commision I walked. It wasn't too bad, but when your sick every distance seems like a ways. So I went to this doctor and he prescribed me three things: 5 Days of Omnicef (an Anti-biotic), a month of Clarinex (a mass-market allergy/congestion drug -- I get a month cause with my insurance it costs the same) and Ambi 800 (Robotussin - for the cough and mucas). Boy I'm glad I have insurance - the doctors visit cost me $5, the perscriptions $10, $25 and $5 respectively. $45 is less than half of what a visit would have cost me out of pocket (not including the strep culture).

My car won't start

Yesterday I drove to CVS and then back to campus. After working in the Library for 5 hours I went out to my car and the battery was dead. Being that is a standard transmission, I decided to pop-start it. It didn't work. I can only assume that there is an electronic ignition lock or something. I haven't called AAA yet to get them to come jump it. I just hope that it's just that I left my lights on or something and not that my alternator went or anything.

Feeling down? Tickle yourself with a Tickle Robot

I'm not sure if this is real, but this video and spec sheet make me wonder. I'm not sure what kind of market there is for self-tickling products, but it's not that far off from personal massagers.

(Link from TickleFight)

Fedex bought kinkos

Folks may remember that a little over a year ago, UPS bought Mailboxes etc. Now that almost every MBE is a UPS Store I can understand Fedex getting nervous about their retail presence. MBE used to do UPS, Fedex, DHL USPS and a couple others, but no more. So apparently, sometime in December Fedex Bought Kinkos. I'm not quite sure how I missed this news, but it makes so much sense. Every kinkos already has a fedex drop box outside and the packing/shipping things is not particularly different from doing copy work. I could see people liking the integrated services offering: get copies made, sign it, notarize it and fedex it. It's the same thing that MBE does but with better printers/copiers.

New layout

You might have noticed I changed the layout little bit. Let me know what you think.

Welcome to crunch time

All my work needs to be completed before wednesday may 5th at 7pm in order for me to graduate. Before then I have to do the following things:

10-15 page paper for my globalization class (about 75% done, due Tues 4/27)
A 5-7 minute presentation about my globalization paper (for Tues 4/27)
5-8 page paper for my Economics Research Methods class (50% done)
A presentation about that paper (for Mon 5/3)
A problem set for my Economics Research methods class (due Mon 5/3 9:00AM)
Final Exam for Non-profit management (Wed 5/5 7:00 PM)
Database backed website that cam and I are doing. It's a product comparison engine (due Wed 5/5 7:00PM or so) -- This will involved probably another 40+ hours of work each, maybe more.

Things I've done

I think I might, when I graduate, spend some time developing a PHP application that would allow me to keep track of what I've done. I got the idea from an old BBS friend, who on his site maintains a list of Movies he has seen. I think I would like to start doing that for books, movies and most importantly beer. The site could be called nounsIverbed. Which would super dorky. I would accompany each one with a little sentence or two about what I thought about it, but not much more detail than that, unless I was particularly moved. I would love to combine this into a "my life" site or something. This could be the merging of my gallery, my blog and nounsIverbed. I think it could be cool.

Photos of dead American's result in firing

According to this followup seattle times article, Tami Silicio (the woman who took the photograph of flag draped american coffins mentioned before) was fired for that picture. A washington post article (free reg req) from October 21, 2003 confirms the official policy of not performing any ceremonies for dead soliders. Even more amazing is that the photo the WP included is from 1998. Six months into the war and they didn't have a single photo to use from the Iraq war.

This scares me for two reasons. First, Americans think about the death of soliders as a just numbers (x killed today, x killed since the war began, etc). And second, the rest of the world who is not part of coalition of the willing will not realize that AMERICANS ARE DYING and that there is a toll on Americans too.

Thanks to Emma for the link.

NetStumbler 0.4 (New version) is out!

Ever since I got a wireless card, I've liked the idea of wardriving and stumbling around for wireless access points. For windows, there is really only one application that does this very well, and that's NetStumbler and today the new version, Netstumbler 0.4 was released! (Announcement, Download, and Readme) I hope other folks enjoy this as much as I do.
Continue reading "NetStumbler 0.4 (New version) is out!"

Free teleconference/conference calls

Today I stumbled across this ultracool service called Free Conference that allows you to setup teleconferences for free. Each caller just pays the cost of the phone call to whichever call center has space (I got one in Ventura, CA). This is awesome, but it is even more awesome if you have unlimited long distance on your cell phone or using something like The Neighborhood, ATT & or Verizon Freedom for your land line. Although I don't need anything like this now, it could be very useful if I end up doing more consulting stuff in the future.

Toyota Echo: 43MPG = 34 Trips to the mall

I recently saw an ad for the Toyota Echo that had this statement at the top: "43 MPG. Translation: 34 Trips to the mall." This makes me angry. One step forward, two steps back...we need to save money on fuel...so we can be consumer whores at the mall great. If you want to see the image itself
Continue reading "Toyota Echo: 43MPG = 34 Trips to the mall"

Pictures of dead american's in Iraq

As mentioned earlier today there are very few pictures in the mainstream media (or anywhere on the internet) of coffins. This is an intentional action by the bush administration. In fact they aren't body bags any more, they are transfer tubes. Although it is possible to find a list American soliders who died in Iraq this is not something Bush administration ever speaks to: the human cost of war. One thing that makes me wonder though is whether Bush is mis-judging the population. According to a survey cited in this Washington Post article:

"The survey found that military leaders consistently show less tolerance for casualties than civilian leaders, who in turn show less tolerance for casualties than the public at large. (In Iraq, the survey showed the public would tolerate, as a mean figure, 29,853 American fatalities; civilian elites would tolerate 19,045; and their military counterparts would tolerate 6,016.)"

This suprises me. But none the less I feel that there needs to be a place to collect these images if they are going to be so rare. So I created A gallery of images of bodies being removed from Iraq. So far I've only found six images (five British, one American) of coffins being removed from Iraq. I would be interested in photos of coalition forces of any nation. I am limiting myself to coalition forces not because I think the death of American soliders is more important, but because I have seen numerous images of dead Iraqi civilians and soliders whereas I have seen no photographs of Americans until today.

So swing by the gallery and if you find any other images, feel free to add some images if you find some more

Watch out Radhouane Charbib here comes Leonid Stadnik

Wow. At 2.53 meters, he is now the world's tallest man and he apparently is still growing. The is some question whether he may overcome Robert Wadlow (Tallest man in history at 2.72 meters).

(article link from POE News)

Conformists at Logan

Apparently, if you fly out Logan airport (Boston) you may be subject to a set a profiling that is not about race, gender or ethnicity, but instead more generic things. "They look for odd or suspicious behavior: heavy clothes on a hot day, loiterers without luggage, anyone observing security methods." The what and the who? Every time I fly I am fascinated by security check in procedures and how these operations run. Every airport does things a little differently and I am curious about those differences...it gets me thinking about the differences in thinking that formed the current set of things. Combine that with the fact that I sometimes (rarely) fly without luggage (just a small backpack) ... I'm positive that I would get stopped. I have really mixed feelings about these sorts of things. First off, I wonder how effective it is (there are no clear signs either way, only circumstancial) and second I wonder about how far this sort of profiling can go. This sort of thinking is what leads you to the idea that everyone should adhere and conform to these social norms (as defined by who?) and if you don't conform, you should be punished. If you don't think it's punishment, it's certainly negatively enforced...you are singled out and asked to prove that you are not a terrorist (interviews, more extensive ID check, etc). Next time you will know if you don't want to be checked, that you should stand nicely in line, wear the proper clothes and not look at anything around you.

(CNN Article Link)

Dead Americans. One of the few pictures

The bush administration has been very sure to not allow members of the media to photograph the caskets and body bags of dead soldiers in Iraq. Here is one of those pictures.

(Source: Seattle Times)

UPDATE: The photographer (Tami Silicio) lost here job because she took this picture.

Gay's can discriminate too

"Three heterosexual couples said they were turned away from a hotel in this gay-friendly tourist destination because of their sexual orientation, which would violate city law. The six were vacationing with a gay couple and had reservations at Big Ruby's in downtown Key West when the three straight couples were turned away. "The manager literally said, 'We don't want you here,"' said Jim Pirih, who had vacationed at Big Ruby's last year with his partner, Jason Williams."

(Article Link)

Make your roof white, save 40% on energy expenses...

Apparently global warming is caused not only by fossil fuel CO2 emissions, but also by people choosing to make things black instead of white or green. Would it make sens for the government to make "reflectivity requirements" on new homes? Yes. Check out this article it has some more information and other related links.

(from BoingBoing)

12+ inch poopie

I just took a crap and before wiping I took a look (as I often do) and it was huge. Like a continuous 12+ inch poopie.

Random ass Guilford peope LJ links

I've hated on LiveJournal for a while now. Not exactly sure why, but its pretty unmistakable. I knew I had lots of LJing friends, but when I actually spent some time spidering I found quite few people I know: Joanna, Angela, Steve, Laura, Emily, Kat, Monica, Christin, Bill, Tina and of course Daysie.

Line between personal and public weblog

So recently I've been considering writing my own blogging software. Not because I feel like I could do a better job than the software that is out there, but because what is out there just doesn't quite fit my needs. I am very aware that everything I publish on my blog is available to the general public. This means there is a certain level of self-censorship that goes on. Unlike some people who document all aspects of their lives in detail for anyone on the internet to discover, that kind of creeps me out. I would like to have some sort of personal journal, preferrably electronic in nature, which I can post my everyday thoughts to, but without them necessarily showing up as part of my blog. Ultimately I think I would like to have a public and private weblog. The public weblog would be brainsoup, and the private weblog would be superset of this. Everything included on brainsoup would also be included in this private blog. I could invision myself allowing close friends to have logins allowing them access to the personal site.

Regrets

I try not to have regrets about things I do, but sometimes I can't help it. Tonight I've been looking back on how I've acted in the past in some situations and how I wish I had handled them differently. For certain people this has more bearing than for others. For anyone who recognizes themselves as being affected by my misjudgment, I apologize.

Can't sleep, too tired

I stayed up all night yesterday. I got around four hours of sleep scattered across three naps. Now I can't seem to sleep because I'm too tired. This is getting old.

Intentional communities - Sirius in Shutesbury

I've always thought I would like live in an intentional community like Sirius. Although I didn't know much about it until I dated a girl who had lived there for a number of years, I think I would really like the idea of intentionally forming a tight knit community around some common simple values. Interested? Boston.com had an article 6 months ago about the 25th aniversary.

Control Shift in Microsoft Word changes you R->L entry mode

I've recently come across a very annoying (an undisablable as far as I can tell) 'feature' in Microsoft Word. If you press the Control and Shift keys on the right hand side of the keyboard, it changes into Right to Left text entry mode. Yeah. So when I'm typing my paper, suddenly I want to start writing Hebrew text. Just in case you were wondering, this is with Word 2002 (XP) and yes I did check the keyboard options, there is no shortcut assigned to changing the input mode into R-L. Now that I think about it, that would be an awesome prank to pull on someone...make it so everytime they press ctrl-s (for save) it changes their current paragraph into right to left mode. Evil...

Thinkpad Mouse port: Just for mice, No Keyboards

Well, today I found something out about my thinkpad t21. Most notably, the fact that the port on the back, which I had always assumed was for either an external mouse or keyboard, is only for mice. I never really thought about it before, because most modern motherboards allow you to use either port for either device and my only external keyboard is a USB one. Well, I was in the library and needed an external keyboard (data entry) and so I just stole one from one of the terminals. It didn't work. It's funny, because I swear I've seen adapters sold that allow you to split to port so you can use both a keyboard and mouse, but maybe I was mistaken.

World Cup 2006 in Germany

I just found out that the 2006 World Cup will be held in Germany. The matches will be played in 12 different cities including Munich. Maybe by then I will have earned a little money and could go back to Munich to visit and go to a game or too. More likely I will never be able to afford such a trip, but I can dream, right.

Free Anti-Virus Application

I've never been very happy with either Norton AntiVirus or McAffe VirusScan as both are reasonably expensive and require yearly subscriptions to keep up to date. Most people think that when they buy a product, they can use it for as long as they wish -- this isn't true with AV solutions. You can use the product, but it's useful lifetime ends as your subscription runs out(usually 1 year with boxed versions). After a TERRIBLE experience (making a XP Home system unbootable) with F-Secure AntiVirus, I would never recommend it. And allow I have a soft spot for Kaspersky Lab's product (I once had Trojan that no other AV solution recognized and Kaspersky had identified it months before) my friend bill pointed me to GRI Soft's AVG Free which is a free AntiVirus solution with free automatic updates. Of course, I don't run any AV, but many people like the idea of it.

Small Steps to get healthier

I just saw an ad on TBS for a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services called SmallSteps. It's a set of 100 small steps on how to get healthier. Like #19 "Replace Sunday drive with Sunday walk." or "Use a snow shovel instead of a snow blower." I think this program is smart and unlike many other prohealth campaigns (anti-drug anyone) is positive rather than negative.
Continue reading "Small Steps to get healthier"

Windows 2000 and Windows XP have no Deltree

If you've been using Microsoft DOS/Windows systems for a while, you are certainly familiar with the deltree command. As I have known for a while Windows 2000 Professional/Server, Windows XP Home/Professional have no deltree. Although I looked this up before, there is a replacement... "rmdir /s" or just "rd /s". Works like a charm.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Halloween Costumes

They made reference to it on Adult Swim 5 minutes ago. The ebay auction was at $41.50 when they aired it (and when I first looked at it) but in the last 7 minutes it's up to $100. I'm sure it'll go higher than that. The description reads:

"Set of 3 costumes. One each of Grand Master Shake, Sir Frylock, and Meatwad; character's from Cartoon Planet's cartoon series Aqua Teen Hunger Force! Full size adult costumes made from foam and cardboard. All in good condition, only worn one time. Sure to be a hit next halloween!"

Update: 15 minutes since it aired. $172.50 plus $78.50 shipping...$250 for three costumes...expensive.

BearRock Cafe has wireless, GC cafe does not

I have a lot of work to do (both overdue and upcoming) and so I decided that to get started on it I would take myself out to dinner at Bear Rock Cafe and have a nice sandwich for dinner and then get some work done there. Bear Rock Cafe is one of the few locations in Greensboro with free wifi. I have been having some trouble motivating myself and just getting my work done lately and so I thought that a change of location might help. So I packed up my laptop and got in the car all psyched to get some work done and drove to the Friendly Center. To my suprise the parking lots were empty and there were almost no cars anywhere. As I drove past the darkened windows I realized it wasn't just because today was rainy and overcast, it was Easter. So much for that idea. So I regretfully drove back to campus to go to the Guilford cafeteria, but was very unsatisfied with their food. No pizza, instant mash potatoes, cold veggie burgers with stale buns, no turkey for sandwiches, no pickles and there wasn't even any fruit. And here I am in the library, unsatisfied (dinner) and unrelaxed (loud noise of fans blowing). Happy Easter.

Mathematical Proof: a * b = f(a+b) - f(a-b) where f(x) = x2/4

So one night a couple weeks ago Cameron came into my room to show me something he stumbled across for his independant study. He is doing an independant study in assembly programming for the Commodore 64. He was currently trying to write a program that would perform multiplication (the processor does not have a multiplication operation). On the internet (I don't know where) he found a partial solution. (See first line of image below). The reason that this is important is that one could, instead of performing the expensive multiplication operations everytime, just create a lookup table of all the squares and use them calculate every other possible combination. We tried it out with a bunch of different numbers and it always works. Try it yourself, it's cool...that night I spent a little time thinking about how/why this was true and gave up and went to bed. A couple days later I wrote it up on my whiteboard and came up with the following proof:

Math is fun kids and sometimes it has bearing on the real world.

Infocom games for free

If you used to play video games back in the day, you've probably played a text adventure game. And the best text adventure games were made by Infocom. So recently Infocom released their games into the public domain. Although some people love the many Zork games, Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It is the best in my mind. If you've got some time on your hands, I recommend fooling around with those games, they are a great waste of time.

Thinkpad T21, Windows + Mandrake > Windows + Debian

[GEEK]: So for the last 24 hours or so I've been worried about my laptop. I had a dual boot configuration with Windows 2000 and MandrakeLinux, but Debian is my Linux distribution of choice. I run debian on two different servers (include the box this is hosted on) and love it. I've always had trouble getting X windows working with Debian, but this has never been a problem with my server because they are only servers. So after my friend Bill installed Debian and got it running with X I thought I would give it a shot again. With some research, I came across a website for the guy who wrote the XFree86 support for my S3 Savage XI video card and was ready to go. Well. I failed. And in the process, the debian install made it so I couldn't boot into windows anymore so I thought oh, I'll just boot off the Windows 2000 CD in recovery mode and it will restore the boot sector (blowing away GRUB, but that's ok). I popped in the cd, ran the recovery thing and restarted...of course when it went to boot I got the wonderful: Operating system not found message. After trying a bunch of different things I figured out what it was. Debian had set its partition bootable (and thus set the Win2k partiion not bootable). Jeezums. Hours lost. I was all ready to boot off a Knoppix CD, copy everything to another computer and then reinstall. I'm glad I don't have to do that.

Being 23 is going to be a great year.

(I thought mike's comment needed to be upgraded to a full entry)

John Stewart on the O'Franken Factor

If you've been living under a rock, you might not have heard about a new radio network, Air America Radio. In their own words Air America Radio is a collaborative effort that brings together a group of experienced radio entrepreneurs with a talented team of creative artists. We are a new voice in talk radio: a smart voice with a sense of humor. It brings to the marketplace an unserved need. We give voice to what millions of Americans are thinking, but can't hear on radio. Until now! So this afternoon, I decided to tune into Al Franken's new show, The O'Franken Factor. One of the guests they had on today's show was Jon Stewart. I found it funny and refreshing and so I decided to record it when the show was rebroadcast tonight. Since all they have is a live RealAudio feed I just recorded the output using TotalRecorder. So, I took the recorded output and encoded it into OGG Vorbis. (It's like MP3, but better. If you can't play it back, just download Winamp 5 (windows) or QT Components (Mac OSX).

I have cropped the audio to the middle hour (of three)...without further delay, go ahead and listen to the hour of funny. I apologize for any audio quality problems, you get what you get.

Viagra - Take the blue pill and I will show you how far the rabbit hole goes

Spam is awesome.

(link)

Super addictive castle defender game...with bloody stick figures

So Cam showed me a link to this flash game called Defend Your Castle which I have just wasted the last 45 minutes of my life playing. The point of the game is to defend your castle (duh). You do this by picking up the stick figures charging your castle and then drop them from the top of the screen. They fall, the go squish, it makes noise and there is blood. It's cute. Of course, what would a game be without powerups. You can spend your points on learning how to make things like a temple (so you can can convert attackers), archers (shoot arrows killing charging stick figures automatically) and explosives (suicide bombers that walk out onto the battlefield and blow themselves up). Yeah. It's fun. Yeah, I'm sick.

Dreams dreams dreams

So last night (this morning) I had a bunch of really cool and fun dreams. They were interupted by my alarm going off, but I was smart enough to reset my alarm and go back to sleep to make sure to continue the dreams. In the first one, after I had graduated I decided to take a trip. I hadn't told anyone (even my parents) where I was going and on whim I decided to go to China. Yep China. My view of China was terribly stereotypical, but being that I had no local currency I was walking a lot. I wasn't in a major city (I don't know how I flew in but it's a dream, that's irrelevant) and in a rural area where the terrain was quite moutainous. There was massive hilss everywhere with lots of people walking up them (almost no one was going down them...I don't know...). So after buying myself something to drink at a local market, I decided that I should just walk around for a while and get a feeling for what was going on. So after walking for like half an hour or so I realized that I no longer had my backpack (note: I decided to fly to china for 2-3 weeks and I all I brought was a small backpack with no clothes in it...just my laptop). So very frighted I ran back to where I had sat and drank my Juice and there was my backpack on the ground. Catastrophy averted. So after finding my bag I ended up meeting some a guy and his wife who spoke english so I had someone to talk to. I remember discussing the fact how I was disapointed that I was already beginning to remember the layout of the land...how after being in a foreign country for 3 hours I was bored of it, I don't know, but...

Note: I originally started this as a draft almost two weeks ago, but it's still true, just not from last night.

McGurk effect - My brain is broken

Mike sent me a link to a page with a video about the McGurk effect. Try it for yourself...I'm always amazed when I find out things like this about our brains. I wonder if people who are deaf (and who were not always deaf) have hearing irregularities along these lines. Just in case that site goes down, I have replicated it in the body of this entry
Continue reading "McGurk effect - My brain is broken"

Discovery Channel 4am: Tivo Data Broadcast

So here I am, channel surfing at 4am. What do I stumble across on the Discovery channel? It's a little odd to describe. The left hand third of the screen is taken up by what looks like calibration bar code (alternating 6 white and 5 black evenly sized bars and then a larger blak bar and then a medium sized white bar. The right hand two thirds of the screen are flashing what looks like a data stream. There are 15 columns with probably 400 or so rows in each. They flash pretty quickly. The middle of the screen scrolls the following black text on a white background: "This pattern is part of the TiVo Service Broadcast." There is a generic swing music loop in the background which is like 30 seconds long. Once in the middle of the song and then once again when the music loops (twice in thirty seconds) a voice says: "This pattern is part of the TiVo broadcast. There is nothing wrong with your television." It's kind of funny. I did find a newsgroup thread about it, but googling only gives me two hits. According to that newsgroup, it program guide data that new TiVo download instead of phoning in. Cool. Just in case you were wondering, we get our channel feeds from DirectTV so this is for their subscribers.

So, after this data played back for 15minutes or so, it was followed by a note that the following content was produced exclusively for TiVo owners. There was a two minute commerical directly targeted at TiVo owners to encourage their friends to call tivo and get a DVD about how cool tivo service is. Then came a 2 minute thing behind the scenes thing for some wierd daytime drama with teenage actors (don't care, don't care, don't care...just want my ocomma game sphere) Which was followed by a movie trailer for Van Helsing (imdb link), a forthcoming Dracula movie I've never heard of. This was followed by another trailer, this time for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (imdb link). Which by the way was a really cool movie. Jim Carey is an awesome actor. Oh and by the way, it was written by Charlie Kaufman (the same guy who wrote Being John Malcovich and Adaptation) But anyways, that was it, after the second trailer it said something to the effect of "the preceding was produced for especially for tivo owners." It's interesting, I wonder exactly when/where TiVo owners might encounter this programming? It's odd, but I like it.

April Fools Day jokes can be funny? Who knew.

On the internet today there were quite a few lame April fools day jokes. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation made me giggle. For those who may not get to read this in time to view the spoofed site, I also have a screenshot showing the top two headlines:

The EFF Aquires the US Department of Justice
Jack Valenti to Join EFF Board

In case you missed some of the humor, compare the spoof to the original US Depepartment of Justice website.

Less time watching television

The nytimes is reporting that 18-24 year olds are watching 20% less television than last year. Of course my own viewing habits are erratic at best, but in the last year or so I've found myself watching less and less televsion everyday. I think I am probably spending about the same (maybe a little more, I don't know) on the internet and a definately more time playing video games. Also when I watch televsion now it is for specific shows:

The Daily Show (1-2hrs a week)
Chapelle's Show (0-1hrs a week)
Scrubs (0-1hrs a week)
Southpark (0-1hrs a week)

Although sometimes I throw the TV at night as I am checking my mail/settling down, most of my viewing habbits are very deliberate. I watch the shows I want to see and not much else. This is one reason that I think a Tivo would fit me perfectly. I could just set it/forget it and watch at my convenience. I do also find myself spending too much time playing video games especially now that we have an XBox (thanks Todd!) and a Sega Saturn with 10 player bomberman.

Bush/Cheney Sloganator

Apparently, for a short time, the Bush/Cheney 2004 website had a service called the SLOGANATOR. It let you enter your own slogan and then it gave you a nice PDF with your slogan on top of the bush/cheney 2004 logo. Some nice individual put together a little flash animation to music of some of the best of them (local mirror). There is even a yahoo group dedicated to the sloganator.

(from boingboing)

Hippo vs. Shark vs. Crocodile

While CartoonNetwork's Adult Swim has been hyping Flying Shark vs. Flying Crocodile, Discovery Channel is pulling a close second with Hipp vs. Bull Shark. Too bad the discovery channel uses computers instead of sock puppets to simulate the fight.

Last thursday we had the party, but wednesday is my birthday

We had a fun party to kick off serendipity celebrating my birthday a little early. I got some cool presents, but the most notable were the 4 boxes of oatmeal cream pies. Yep 48 pies. Or as mike pointed out, 96 cookies. And between thursday night and sunday morning they all got eaten. I'm a little frightened of the actual prospect of turning 23. 23 is old. Well, at least not young. And I feel like I haven't really done much with my life. Maybe I should fix that.

Hmmm....

thinking...thinking...thinking...

Serendipity was fun

My last serendipity (spring fling like thing) he at guilford is over. I had a good time, but I'm a little partied out. My little brother came down to visit and that was cool, I just wish there were other things happening on campus besides parties.

Your real estate agent is probably cheating you

Amy's mom sent her an interesting New York Times magazine a while ago that had an profile of Steven Levitt. He is an Economist, a unique one at that. I read the paper version before and just recently stumbled across someone else linking to the article online. If you have ten minutes, read the article. Smart dude. I wish I thought like that.

I hate getting up early

It's late. I have class at 9:55 tommorow morning. That means that I need to get up by 8:30 so I can get my work done for class. I often stay up late because there are so many things I want to do, but just don't get the chance to do during the day. I just wish I had more hours in the day. So here is what will happen, I will get up early tommorow, go to class, eat lunch and then crash at around noon. Nap until 4pm when I (hopefully) have a meeting with a professor about my independant study. At least I don't have class at 8pm too. I'm just tired and overworked all the time. It's getting old. And everyday I feel like I'm playing catch up.

iTunes allowance accounts

I remember hearing a while back about how the iTunes music store started having gift certificates and prepaid cards you could buy at Target, but apparently I missed another part of that announcement...iTunes allowance accounts. Apparently parents can give their kids an "allowance" for spending on music. It can even automatically replenesh monthly if you want. I'm not sure how many people would actually give this to their kids, but it's an interesting idea none the less.

Dashboard Confessional covering REM on iTunes

We've all seen Apple iPod and iTunes ads on televsion, but tonight I saw an ad for an album sold on the iTunes music store. The album is Dashboard Confessional covering REM's Automatic for the People. They apparently did it for the MTV show Album Covers (which suprisingly, doesn't have it's own page at mtv.com!) DC has album coversinfo on their website. Apparently this album is exclusively being sold through the iTunes music store. If you have iTunes, just follow this link to bring it up. Sorry, Mozilla/Opera users no link for you.

Bob Edwards is leaving Morning Edition

Apparently, effective April 30th, Bob Edwards will no longer be on NPR's Morning Edition. He will still be on NPR, but I will miss hearing his voice while driving in the morning.

DUI in Ohio means you get Yellow plates

FOXNews is running a 'fair and balanced' report that Ohio will soon be having special license plates for DUI offenders. Ouch, but being that it is only for those under court-restrict driver's licenses, I would say it's better for the individuals than not driving at all.

Aparently Illinois is considering doing the same thing too.

Night of the Living Dead is in the Public Domain

Mike alerted me to the fact that Night of the Living Dead is now in the public domain, and archive.org has it available for download. So if you've never seen it should you should take the time to watch it. If you have the bandwidth to spare, you can download a DVD ready 4.2 gig MPEG-2 file.

Santa is dead. Yay!

(Gabe sent me the link)

I want/need a cell phone

I've gone without a cell phone for more than a year now and have very rarely wished that I did have one. I'm very glad that I don't have to spend the $30-$40 a month for service, but also glad that at times, people just can't reach me. I like that. So now that I am graduating and may be in transition for a while and am starting to the consulting thing again, I feel like I need a cell phone. There are potentially three (four) providers that I am seriously considering for service: Verizon, SprintPCS and Cingular (ATT Wireless). Although the aquisition of ATT Wireless by Cingular is not complete yet, it should happen sometime soon. I am not considering a few others because their coverage sucks (T-Mobile, AllTel, Virgin Mobile) or I just don't need and hate Direct Connect (Nextel).

So I was thinking about what I wanted in a phone and I was realizing that I one of the primary things I was looking for in a phone was interoperability with my laptop. There are four ways that this can happen, I am willing to settle for any of them. In order of preference: bluetooth, USB, serial or InfaRed. Although I currently don't have a bluetooth on my laptop, I am willing to buy a card.
Continue reading "I want/need a cell phone"

Lactose intolerance continued...

As mentioned before, I recently have developed a love/hate relationship with milk products. So yesterday I went to the opening of an art show of a friend of mine. Well, as you might imagine at classy places like this, they had fruit, crackers and of cheese. They had brie, cheddar, swiss and smoked gouda. Yum. Of course, I was the idiot who at some. Stupid me. I was again in miserable pain last night. It sucked. To make things worse, I decided that it might make sense to put some lactaid (lactase enzyme that helps you digest lactose) in my wallet for when I might need it. Of course, the pills are super soft and just turned to powder in a matter of hours. This sucks.

Enemy at the gate...eh

So I borrowed and watched Enemy at the Gates. Although I am interested in Stalingrad during world war ii, somehow this film never quite captured my attention. I just had trouble with that whole suspension of disbelief thing.

Google image search is cool, but where's the smut

If you haven't been living under a rock, you have probably used Google Image Search, but you might be disapointed that it really only indexes non adult images. Xahara fills that void.

Cereal Box archive

The internet is full of silly shit. Like a guy collecting images of cereal boxes.

Played tennis today

I played tennis today for the first time in a while. I hadn't played in probably five years or more until this summer when I played with gabe while at home. So I played with a friend of mine on the Guilford courts...they aren't great, but certainly good enough for me. Just like racquetball, I want to play more. One little problem (besides the fact that my serve sucks) is that I got a pretty bad blister on my finger playing racquetball and so its been getting in the way of just about everything.

Lactose intolerance sucks

Recently, like in the last month or so, I realized that I have a lactose intolerance. It sucks. If I remember to take lactaid everything is fine, but I often forget. It's difficult to remember, but it is even worse when I am eating in the cafe at school and often don't have my bag (or some other place to keep the lactaid pills) and eat milk/cheese products. It sucks. Tonight I forgot ate a bowl of ice cream and now I'm paying for it. A friend of mine suggested I make labels/stickers ("TAKE LACTAID") and put them on every dairy product in the fridge. It might not be a bad idea, certainly not a total solution though.

Safe for work porn

This guy, Edouard Leve, made a site with porn that is safe for work. Awesome.

Linux Kernel Swear Count

Apparently someone had too much time on their hands and made a site that counted the occurances of swears in the linux kernel source. There's even a graph.

Yesterday I played racquetball for two hours...now I hurt

Yesterday Cam and I played racquetball for a while. Something like two hours. This is the first time I've played since I was a little kid...it was lots of fun. The one thing is though, I'm really sore right now because I hadn't done anything really physically active since before spring break. I did ride my bike to the store on Sunday night, but that wasn't a workout at all, I didn't even break a sweat. I can't wait to play again.

Someone who likes spam

When the National Do Not Call registry was being setup, there was outcry from some people who liked getting telemarketer phone calls. Mostly old people who lived alone. Well, apparently it is the same sort of demographic that also likes to read and buys things from spam. At least according to an article in the Wall Street Journal about Orlando Soto.

(from slashdot)

I have a newly found appreciation for hills

On the drive back down to school I was really bored. I downloaded the realAudio of 4 episodes of This American Life (259, 258, 256 and 255 if you care) and listened to Bill Maher's When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden Audiobook. After these were done, I listened to some music, but was generally very bored. So I wanted to see how far I run on a single tank of gas. I was not planning on running out of gas necessarily, but when the low fuel light went on, I estimated that I had three gallons of gas left and could thus go about 105 miles (35mpg * 3). As it turns out, my estimate was right on the money. I was able to go 111 miles at which point I ran out of gas an coasted into a nearby gas station. I thought I was super slick, but I then realized that although they had lights on inside the store and at the gas pumps, there was no one there and it was closed. I noticed that about 200 yards down the road was a shell station so I decided to push the car there. It wasn't easy (although not hard) to push the car out of the station and across 5 lanes (2 lanes each way + a turn lane). Luckily it was 5AM and there was very little traffic.

So there I was, pushing my car across the street, which actually required PUSHING, not if you were pushing your bike across the street. But anyways, once I got all the way across the street and turned so I was in just one lane, I realized that the road to the shell station was all down hill and the car was rolling. Quickly I realized that I didn't need to push the car and was just walking next to it. Why walk next to the car, when you could just stand on the inside of the door. So there I was, standing on the door frame, door open coasting down the hill. And I just rolled into the station. The station, which appeared to flat was in reality a slight hill and thus required some pushing to actually get the car to the pump. Sometimes when you drive in a car all the time (this trip was 13hrs) you forget what you are actually overcoming. Imagine walking or biking that distance. Insane.

Always on top maker

Back in the days of Windows 3.11, I used to use an application called Ftask (which I haven't been able to find recently) which allowed you to change the way certain windows looked and acted. Essentially it was a better taskmanager. The only feature that I used from it regularly was the "make this application always on top" function. I recently found a small (6k) application that lets you do this easily and quickly. The freeware application is called Always On Top Maker. You can download the application from them, or I also have a local download mirror in case their site ever goes offline. I now run this app everytime windows starts and if I want to make a window always on top, I just press CTRL-ALT-T.

Elliot from scrubs (Sarah Chalke) was on Rosanne

While watching Roseanna, I noticed that Becky, the older sister, in this episode (and apparently the second half of the series) was played by Sarah Chalke, the Canadian actress who plays Elliot on Scrubs. She hasn't changed that much in the last 10-15 years.

Nice to be home

It's nice to be home. It's the little things, like having a shower that is big enough for me.

Done with midterms

I'm done with my midterms. Yay. I'll be leaving tommorow to go back to MA. I wish I could have gone to Iowa to visit Emma, but I just don't have the money.

RFID tags in money?

I saw this on slashdot. Do your twenties have RFID tags in them? Is law enforcement (or the treasury department) tracking where you bring/use your money. Some guys thought they found RFID tags in their 20 dollar bills, and so they put them in the microwave and cooked them. Scary. If I had $20, I wouldn't put it in the microwave. Probably because it is just the metal strip that caused it to set fire, not an RFID tag.

IMDB obscured images

I went to copy an image from an imdb gallery and all I got was a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent gif. I was confused. As it turns out, they do this funky thing with a table so that the image is actually the background of the cell and this transparent gif covers the entire foreground. I would imagine that this would be reasonably effective at stopping your average joe from stealing images from your website. Of course, if you just view the source for the page you quickly find the actual image link.

Scarlett Johansson, good in Lost in Translation, but better in Home Alone 3

I really liked Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte in Lost in Translation. Yesterday, Amy and I were watching TV, and just happened to stumble upon Home Alone 3 on TBS or USA. Amy was paying enough attention to it to actually catch that the older sister was actually her as well. Quite funny, and a pretty slow start considering she is one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood right now.

Amazon nessiness or how ref=nosim will make you more money

I am an amazon associate. I've made a couple hundred bucks through them over the course of the last six 9 months or so, but I've always found some things wierd about them. The way that you build an amazon link is normally in the form of:

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000B1A3S/duckiesorg-20/

When you follow that think, you get a tiny bit of information about the linked product and only get more information when you click on the title and go to another page. Most of that first page is taken up by related links. On the other hand, if you are just browsing amazon's site, you get linked to a page like so,

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000B1A3S/. But the problem is, if you add on your associate ID to this URL, http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000B1A3S/duckiesorg-20/, you don't actually get credit for the links and purchases. Which is all sorts of no good. There is an alternative though, you can add a ref=sim to the URL.

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000B1A3S/ref=nosim/duckiesorg-20/

I have as of yet found no documention about this option, but I have found a couple of references to the trick, but otherwise it seems to relatively unknown amongst the internet public.

Lost in Translation Soundtrack

If you read my blog somewhat regularly, you may remember that I really liked Lost in Translation. Now that it you can get it on dvd, I am excited to watch it again in its full glory. I had a screener copy of it which was high quality for a screener, but still doesn't hold a candle to a DVD. So anwaysy, the other day my apartment mate Bill put on the Lost in Translation Soundtrack. Awesome disc. I'm listening to it again right now and enjoying it. I wish I had the money to buy either the soundtrack or the dvd, but alas, I don't have the money for that.

Update 2/29/2004 19:53...I added some more info
Continue reading "Lost in Translation Soundtrack"

We had a big party last night that wasn't even planned.

Last night we ended up having an awesome party. The plan was just to have a few folks over, but it expanded some and it worked out really well. People ended up playing quite a bit of Dance Dance Revolution, which I think is a little lame at a party, but a lot of people really enjoyed it. There was also this guy john, who came to the party super prepared. He brought a bunch of different types of liquor, a blender, a shaker, a jigger, a half gallon of ice cream, almond flavored syrup, pouring spouts for bottles and plastic cups. All this to a party he was just a guest at. I would love to go to a party that he hosts!

Browser rendering differences with FT.com

For the last week or so, I've been playing around with Mozilla Firefox, the new name for Mozilla Phoenix. Since I first used it over a year ago, a lot of things have gotten better. The interface has matured in a bunch and my scroll wheel finally works, although it is still broken in Opera. But anyways, Todd noticed the following differences in the page that they get served and the way they render it from this article at FT.com
Continue reading "Browser rendering differences with FT.com"

The Transporter

I just finished watching The Transporter, a dvd that cameron got for free when he bought Fight Club. I was hoping for a cheesy action film with no plot whatsoever. That's what I got. The main character is the guy who was in Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels...silly action movie, but rather satisfying in a mind numbing way.

Dreams are wierd

For some reason I was a little tired this evening and I decided to take a little nap before my evening class, in which I have an exam tonight. This nap was supposed to be like an hour or so, but after an hour I wasn't satisfied so I set my alarm for another 45mins. During that 45mins, I had a bunch of dreams. The one that I remember the most involved me driving around and accidentially cutting off a papa john's driver (who then later came back to get me), me almost crashing into a ditch because I wasn't driving the car for a while, I was just riding on top, me getting into a fight with my dad because I almost crashed the car (he only saw it from a distance and didn't notice I was on the roof, and I wasn't about to tell him), in the process of this, my dad's van (he doesn't have a van, but that's ok) was moved away while I was chatting with my dad, and my car (which at this point had become a van) was stuck in the middle of traffic with no one driving it. So someone else got in a carelessly moved it and because of that a bunch of my shit fell out of the van into a the street including my x10 universal remote (the one I have in my room now that does my tv/vcr/dvd and my lights) and my shoes. I was unconcerned about my shoes and was only interested in making sure my remote didn't get broken. Of course, some fuck head drove over it and it broke into a bunch of pieces. So this is why I was late to my exam (but in reality I was on-time.)

I think I need a politics category

I've been noticing that like a third of my blog entries are now related to politics (and only politics). Maybe I need a politics category. Of course, it's not like anyone looks at the categories anyways.

George J. Mitchell is a cool guy

On thursday of last week I walked into my Globalization class and my professor told us that any of us were welcome to attend a private small group gathering with George J. Mitchell. Whenever a major lecturer comes, as part of my schools Bryan Lecture Series, they allow a small group of students to have a one on one interaction with the guest. This time I happened to be so lucky. Honestly, even while I was at the meeting I didn't know very much about him and in fact I don't know more than the fact that he was a former Senator. If you are interested in peace in Northern Ireland and in Israel/Palestine, you should look at some of his past work. It is pretty impressive. One comment he made I found interesting came after a question about the difficult of a the senate->president transition. Specifically, he saw the biggest problem is compromise. Legislatures are all about compromise. Each one of the thousands (tens of thousands if you've been there long enough) of those decisions, is replicated as part of your history in the senate. Sometimes those were compromises that have no context and look bad 15 years later. Governers have no such record. They speak only when they chose to and they don't have to compromise very often at all. Specifically he mentioned that Bob Dole, while running for President, was accused of compromising on certain issues as senator. The next day he came spoke out and said "bob dole does not compromise." It is very clear that he has, and to me that is a positive trait, but if you a running for president, that is not the case. Odd. Look at Bush, he is the person who honestly can say he doesn't compromise. And look what that has gotten us into.

Saul Williams said it like no one else could

On Friday night I went to go see Saul Williams do spoken word at my school. I hadn't ever heard him speak before, but I was blown away. Much of what he speaks is in the form of poetry, which normally I would shy away from, but here it was incredible. I can't even describe the experience accurately...he was just able to put things into words that I have been unable to before. Simply amazing.

Privacy and Profiling

So I've been just poking around on the interweb as I often do during downtime and I've stumbled across a portion of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) website about profiling. The stuff on this page is what conspiracy theorists have spouted off about before. Of course, none of this site is about speculation. It is about fact. That page is filled far more information that I could even describe, but just an excerpt...

In the process of aggregating profiles, any number of persons may acquire the information of another. In fact, one of the largest commercial profilers, Metromail (now owned by Experian), used prisoners to enter personal information from surveys into computers. This resulted in a stalking case where a prisoner harassed a woman based on information she submitted on a survey. The woman received mail from a convicted rapist and burglar who knew everything about her--including her preferences for bath soap and magazines. In fact, Metromail maintained a voluminous amount of data on the woman. Metromail had twenty-five pages of personal data on her, including her income, and information on when she had used hemorrhoid medicine.

The woman sued (Beverly Dennis, et al. v. Metromail, et al., No. 96-04451, Travis County, Texas.) and as a result of a class-action suit, Metromail may no longer use prisoners to process personal information. During litigation, Metromail claimed that they had not violated the woman's privacy, that they had no duty to inform individuals that prisoners were processing their personal data, and that the data processed was not highly intimate or embarrassing.

Don't buy stuff, do something

I stumbled across an article about a study that suggests: "'experiential' purchases - those made with the primary intention of acquiring a life experience - make people happier than material purchases." I've always felt this way. In fact, often times I look at money I've spent or am about to spend as a number of dinners out. I could buy this toy, or I could go out to dinner 5 times at a nice restaurant. Although I like toys a lot, most of the toys I own (Laptop, Palm, wireless Access Point, etc) allow me to do experiental things better. Like the combination of my laptop and wireless Access Point means that I can be social in the living room while using the computer instead of sitting in my room alone. The study is called "To do or to have? That is the question." and I got the link from PhilG

Bush calls for ban on gay marriage

In a move that suprised no one, Bush is calling for a constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage. It seems to me like this might be some sort of an attempt to further polarize the nation and discourage moderates from well, being moderate. Although Kerry has said that he suppports civil unions, he has also said that he feels marriage is something that should be man/woman only. Kerry hasn't come out and said he supports a constitutional ammendment, so Bush feels the need to herd the American public further out to the extremes. It's funny, I think I remember reading something about a poll a couple months ago that said the majority of american's are with Kerry on this. Pro civil union (~52%) and anti gay-marriage (~54%). Of course those margins are way to small to be useful, because a lot of people don't vote.

Here's the kicker though, if somehow a constitutional ammendment did pass (2/3 of both the house and senate) 3/4 of states would have to adopt it, which could take years. Since SF has marriage now, and Massachusetts will have it in May, the constitutional ammendment couldn't apply to them. I'm not sure how you could make something like this apply retroactively. So it would ban new gay marriages, but what about those who already had them?

White Board for really cheap

So I took the advice left in a comment by Anna Colley about white boards. I went to Home Depot and bought a 4x8 piece of white shower board ($15 I think) and some screws. I then screwed the board into the wall and purchased some dry erase markers. Now for like 1/10th the cost of a real white board I have something that is equally as useful. The only thing I don't like about it is the lack of a marker tray at the bottom. Cameron and I even used it tonight for like 2hrs and now we both have a better understanding of our independent study. I'm excited.

Total Information Awareness (TIA) still here.

The Associated Press ran a story about how the Total Information Awareness program, which congress stopped funding for after public outcry...apparently the government kept a lot of the key aspects and run them under other intelligence organizations. Great, fucking great.

No ID, go to jail? I don't like the idea of that.

This guy didn't have his ID when an officer asked. He was arrested and charged $250. He thought this was unjust and not right. So he is appealing. To the supreme court. They will be hearing his case on March 22. There's even a video of the arrest. I don't know about this guy specifically, but I don't think you should have to produce ID on demand whenever a police officer sees fit.

Webmonkey is closing.

The source of much of my computer related learning, WebMonkey, is closing. Read more about it in wired article. It is a sad day for the interweb.

Teaching in North Carolina

So recently I've been thinking about the possibility of teaching in North Carolina. Because NC has this massive shortage of teachers (as most states do, because they pay teachers so little) I could become a teacher with little work. I would be able to obtain my certification while teaching, they call it lateral entry If I worked in Guilford County, I would make 28,660 according to their pay schedule. I'm pretty sure all I need is a 2.5 GPA, but the Teach4NC site is fuzzy and says it is a 2.5 or passed a test and earned a 3.0 in your major, and 3.0 in your senior year. It is unclear whether it means I can get in with just a 2.5, or whether I will need a 3.0 in major and a 3.0 my senior year. I wasn't worried, but the I realized that I might not meat those requirements. My GPA last semester was a 2.97, so I would have to get at least a 3.03 to meet the second half of those qualifications. But the in major GPA is a little different. I have a solid GPA in my Computing Information Technology major (like 3.4), but in my Economics major I don't have a 3.0. I've gotten quite a few B- grades and even one C+. So as of the beginning of this semester, I have ~2.88 in the major. Based on the number of credits I have taken, I figured out that to have a 3.0 in my major (something I would really like) I need to earn pretty good grades in the two classes I am taking now. I need either an A and a B or an A- and a B+. No less. That worries me some, because my classes are difficult, and I think one of them would be impossible to get an A- in now, so I would need to get an A- or better in the other. Wow, that's a lot of pressure. But of course, that requirement may not even be relevant depending on the actual requirement, because as they have it written now it is ambigious. Also even if the county (besides Guilford county) pays nothing on top of what the state pays for my salary I would be making $25,250 -- A living wage for a new graduate.

WEBoggle

WEBoggle is a web based boggle game where you can play live against other people. It doesn't require java or flash which is cool.

Old English - Sketch Comedy for (from?) retards

If you might be offended by my use of the word retarded, maybe you should take that up tardblog.com (they lost their domain name, sorry) or with gimptard. But anyways, I found a group that put up a bunch of sketch comedy things. They've 20+ shorts including 8 mock apple switch ads. Check them out Oldenglish.org, if you like that sort of thing. It's funny, you should check them out. BTW: All of the videos downloadable in Quicktime and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial license. And if this wasn't enough to get you to at least click on the link, how about this quote:

"My name is Brandon Jones, I hit the fucking Dell kid with a bat."

Kaba kick!

Transformers

I found a site that some guy who has lots of transformers put up. It has pictures and instruction manuals for every transformer. In case you were wondering, my favorite tranformers were as follows: Broadside, Sandstorm, Ramjet...although Astrotrain and Blitzwing were cool too.

Someone I don't know linked my blog...

I'm sure in the past people have made to individual entries on my blog. My friends who have their own blogs link to mine as well. But some random dude who runs patchmonkey.net links me from his front page. I don't know much traffic this guy gets, but it's kind of crazy that someone would dedicate screen real estate to link my useless ramblings.

My gallery has moved

My gallery, which used to live at pix.duckies.org, now lives at http://duckies.org/gallery. I always thought pix.duckies.org seemed silly. All old links should redirect perfectly to the new location.

Sesame street terror alert levels

I found this cool site that has an image that shows you the current terror alert level. With sesame street characters.

I have this little urge to put a logo like that on my page, but then I slap myself and remember it's not 1998. But just for your amusement, here is the current terror level:

Google ramblings

I remember when I first started liking search engines. It was a long time ago. In the times when yahoo was just a directory (not your ultimate portal solution buzzword provider) I started playing with a altavista. Of course in early 1996, it looked much simpler. (You can't see it, but unlike this version a few months later, the original was very bland and simple looking. (No red or yellow in the logo). It's quite funny, you can watch their progression from something simple and useful to something visually overwhelming and scary. Of course, recently following the sucess of google's simplicity, their current page is quick, dirty and downright useful.

But anyways. Google has my entire blog indexed. I can easily search for 'brainsoup 155' or other such queries and get every entry I've ever done. But when I search for links to my blog ("link:brainsoup.duckies.org") I only get four hits. How can that be right? I know for a fact duckies.org, keysamy.org and cam.duckies.org all have links. These results are odd.

It's cause they suck.

The same search on altavista yields 24 results instead of google's 4. I like google. I use it all day, every day. I have the google toolbar in every IE window because it is that useful. But I just wish they wouldn't claim to the capability to do backwards links but then not only have partial support. It pisses me off.

Germany Euro coins

One really cool part about being in Germany last fall (2002) was the different coins for all the Euro countries. Wikipedia has a page for Euro Coins and Euro Banknotes including pictures of all the different forms of money and some additional information about each (who knew every note not only had a letter telling the country of origin, but also a coresponding checksum of the serial number-- making it just a little harder to counterfeit. For those of you who don't know, euro coins all have one side the same, and then each country has a their own versions for the other side. The ones that I was really familiar with while in Munich were the German, French and Austrian versions, although I also have some Dutch and Irish at home too. I liked the variety. Somehow it was more interesting and less sucky than the American State Quarters thing.

Bush. Draft. No.

I don't need to go over this again.

Amy lays it out pretty clearly.

I do have to mindlessly link gabe on this one too. I think a picture is worth a thousand words.

Fuck bush. Fuck the draft.

I seriously am now thinking about where would I move if the draft were reinstated. Or the other question. If I were drafted...would I actually join. I ultimately don't believe in war in general, but at the same time, now that we have set something in motion, shouldn't we follow through? I wasn't ever "for" the war in Iraq, but my feelings were very clear about one thing. If we were going to do it, we better do it right. I know we don't have the resources (currently) for this, but it reminds me of germany after WWII. They have sucessfully broken the democratic process twice. They needed the best democracy money could buy (unless you happen to live in the east). So we set them up with a system that overcame many of the flaws of the American, British and French systems. Why don't we install a system like that. Don't do this half assed. Do it right.

The peanut butter is gone

The twenty pounds of peanut butter is gone. Ever since we got back from break we have had less than a jar and we hadn't eaten any in a while. So last night I finished it. We ate 17.5 pounds of peanut butter (my mom took one jar). I tried to go buy more at costco the other day, but they didn't have skippy, only Jif. And I'm a skippy man.

Someone elses printout at the printer

So this evening I was working in the Library on my Economics project and homework and had some printing to do. Naturally, I printed to one of the 4-5 network printers in the library and went and picked up the 40 or so pages I had spooled off. Not until hours later, back at my apartment did I notice that someone else had printed something in between my print jobs and I had nabbed it. It wasn't anything particularly important, just an order confirmation, but I would be a little embaressed if someone had found this order confirmation. The order was from Powells.com, a used bookseller. Here is what they ordered:

Two used copies of Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving by Betty Dodson.
Two copies of Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture by Carol Queen, one used one new.
One used copy of The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex: The Most Complete Sex Manual Ever Written (3rd Edition) by Cathy Winks and Anne Semans.
Two copies of The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, one used one new.
Two new copies of Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex by Pat Califia.

I'm not sure what to make of this list. I know the person who ordered these books (their name/address was on the confirmation), but that still somehow doesn't explain why they would need two copies of almost all of these books. Maybe one set for them and one for their partner or possibly some of the books are to be given as gifts, I don't know.

Somehow this doesn't seem very far off from my previous entry about someone from slashdot buying 3 sex-related books. Also of note is that on January 15th, someone purchased a copy of Wet: More Aqua Erotica as also mentioned previously and I earned $0.84 from the sale.

Note: I plan on putting their order confirmation into their campus mailbox, just in case they need it.

Update 2004-Feb-11 13:01-I put it in her mailbox.

Woodie

I wish I could carve wood like that.

Check out this sexy video

Best 7 seconds of my day.

More fun in the snow

I think it's funny when people get stuck in the snow. But I'm not quite sure if I think towing damage is funny. Yeah. It is. Video Link: 1 2 3 or as a last resort a local mirror.

Wesley Clark

Salon is reporting that Wesley Clark supports rigorous screening of all passengers and pilots before flight. Although I am against this sort of thing whole heartedly, this isn't far off from any of the other cantidates. What you probably haven't heard about though, is that he is on the board of and a lobbyist for Acxiom, a company which has a massive database with information about every american (and probably many foreigners too). They are a data warehousing company. For Clark, privacy concerns belong on the back burner when profits for his backers are concerned. Yep. Politicians are evil.

Tracking Dan Wynne

I decided tonight, while playing around on Orkut (and accidentially finding a few of my older brother's old friends) that I wanted to track down one of his other friends from whom I had heard NOTHING from in the last 6yrs. His name is Dan Wynne. Here is what google has found for me: He wrote a play in 1996. Yep. That's the only confirmed hit I have about him. This is partly due to the fact that there is an Indonesian tennis star named Angie Dan Wynne, but even as those results are removed ("-tennis -angie" does the trick) we are still left with a flood of useless information. Also there are no listed phone numbers for Dan Wynne in Mass (although there are a few D Wynne listings). The internet is cool and all, but does it actually help you find people?

The interweb has come full circle

On thursday, I was doing some research on Papasan chairs (like the one I got from Pier1 for $100). So I googled for papasan "pier 1". What's the number one hit? Brainsoup.

Horns. Lots of horns.

I'm not sure how I got to this link, but I certainly feel the need to pass it on.

It's a 3:43 video of a guy with horns attached to his body playing funny music. Very odd. But very funny. (local video mirror)

Want your own "Nipple Shield" like Janet?

I found a place that sells Nipple Sheilds like the ones that janet had during the superbowl.

Neat brain trick

While sitting in your chair, lift your right foot slightly off the ground and move it in clockwise circles. Now draw the numeral "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will involuntarily reverse direction.

(BoingBoing linked Teresa Nielsen Hayden who got it from hanging-fire.net.)

RealPlayer that doesn't expire with no spyware.

Thanks to the BBC you can now easily download RealPlayer without any attempts to push RealPlayerPlus or any added spyware. Yipee.

(from boingboing)

Breakdancing + Pope = Super smooth

Apparently the pope had some breakdancing visitors. WFTV (Orlando) has a video too. I wish I could download this and have a copy for the future, but of course it's only available in streaming RM or WMV.

Janet's boobie

If you watched the superbowl, you saw it already, but as I didn't watch the halftime show, here it is.

(Picture from DrudgeReport)

Wesley Clark scares me...he doesn't blink.

Salon has an article about how Wesley Clark doesn't blink. Apparently instead of blinking every 3-4 seconds he blinks every 15-30 seconds. It's creepy. A video on his website confirms it. Creeepy. (local video mirror)

I want a white board

When I used to work in my school's IT department, whenever I needed to brainstorm or think heavily about a project, I took over our conference room and use the big white that was available me. They usually had 4-5 different color markers and every time after I used the board I had a clearer idea of what I wanted than when I started. But since I don't work there anymore, I don't really have access to their private conference room. Some of the folks who work in the department didn't used to like me being in there (who the fuck cares!) but tolerated it because I worked there, but now I don't really want to start anything with the folks who work there. So this leads me to my new conclusion. I want a white board. Not one of the little ones you hang on your door (1ft x 1.5ft at largest) but one of the big ones, like 4ft x 6ft or so. staples has big whiteboards, but they are in the $175 to $300 range for the cheap ones. The $175 one isn't "Stain Proof" whatever that is, but otherwise I totally want a board like that.

I liked girls getting stuck in the snow, but not like this

I wish I could watch dvd's of girls stuck in the mud and snow. Oh baby that turns me on. Or something.

(Link from BoingBoing)

War isn't fair anymore

Along the same vein as this previous entry, I stumbled across a video of American soliders shooting at people in Iraq. I've heard speculation that this was taken after the Iraqis tried to shoot down an apache helicopter with a stinger missile and so they fought back. It still just doesn't seem fair. When watching the video, make note of the fact that the bodily remains glow white because they are warm and it is an infared camera. Fucked up.

Batting practice with Penguins

My roommate bill just sent me a link to a penguin batting practice flash game. I guess it's not really a game, but it is fun none the less. If that link doesn't work, try the local mirror.

Beatbox + Harmonica = Dope

The title pretty much says it all. Original Link or Local Mirror.

(Link from gabe)

Ann Coulter Action Figure

The washington times served me an advertisment today for a talking ann coulter action figure. Here are some choice phrases she recorded exclusively for this doll:

"Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take more of our money, kill babies, and discriminate on the basis of race."
"At least when right-wingers rant, there's a point."
"Swing voters are more appropriately known as the 'idiot voters' because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you're either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster."
"Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil. What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?"
"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like Liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

NC drivers in snow banks...warms my heart

Tonight I watched something that in a sick way made me really happy. I watched two girls get stuck in the snow and ice (for those of you in the north: three inches closed my school and everything around. Half the businesses weren't open.) I tried to help them get out, but it became very apparent that their 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee they were driving (MSRP ~$28,000) that gets only 16mpg in the city only had two wheel drive. I tried to help them out, but to no avail. And as I walked back to my car (which I had no trouble getting out) I watched them back the car further down the hill until they hit the curb and angle the car such that even if they got the necessary traction they would have to hit another car to get out. Good job girls! I bet you thought your SUV would be fine in the winter. Funny how my Toyota Camry with front wheel drive (30mpg city) had no troubles all day. Karma. It'll come and get ya.

I've had a geeky evening

My afternoon/evening has been quite geeky. Although I've played with a bunch of random things today, I've actually done some productive things too.

I helped amy buy a modem and installed it and got her connecting to school (dialup! Ahhhh)
I moved amy's blog to it's new home: http://keysamy.org/blog/
I setup a PHP RecipeBook recipe database for amy and then made PHP not show ugly "Notice" messages (changed error level)
I helped cameron get up and running with PHP and PostgreSQL (I think we still haven't tested the pair)
I played around some for my independant study doing database schema design

Somehow when I look at this list I see a lot of things for amy, but then I realize she is paying me for doing this consulting work...and as I am currently broke as hell, I can definately spend some time on my day off making money.

Visual Zip Codes

I know this is super nerdy, but this guy Ben Fry wrote a visual representation of US zip codes as an applet. With each sucessive number you enter of a zipcode, it shows the smaller and smaller area until it singles down to one dot with the city name. Pretty cool.

Kill Bill 2 Trailer

I thought Kill Bill kind of sucked. I think it might not suck quite as much if it was complete. So I guess I have to go see Kill Bill 2...until then, there is just a trailer.

MTV making fun of Deaf people

I'm just sitting here using the computer, the tv tuned to mtv...I pretty much just look up for the commercials (I like marketing a lot, as a kind of hobby)...so mtv had with two white deaf kids talking in sign language (with subtitles) using black slang (or call it hip hop slang, I don't give a shit) and their black friend walks up, and then makes fun of how they sign. (Using sign language...it's funny...) And then at the end it says "Blame MTV". I like ads that make me laugh. Maybe it's not right, but it's still funny.

We got snow....so the sky is pink

Many times while I was living in Massachusetts I would look out at night and see a pink glow over everything in sight. Esspecially so when there was snow. Right now, for the first time at Guilford, I am looking at my window at that same pink glow of light pollution over the snow. Until recently I never really thought about how/why/when this happned...but now it just makes sense. Flood lighting around campus bounces off the highly light reflective white snow and makes the sky pink. I would bet this is further enhanced by heavy cloud cover (snow storm and all). So does that mean that places that have concrete (white) roadways as opposed to asphalt (black) ones have more light pollution? I wonder.

The Peanuts video for Hey Ya!

Somebody with way too much time on their hands put together a video for Outkast's Hey Ya! using clips from Peanuts television specials. It's kind of funny. If the original page is down, I also have a local mirror if that one is down.

(Link from mike)

New staff members moving into the apartment below me

About a week ago I found out that there were two people moving into the formerly vacant apartment below me. I was a little worried because we often throw loud parties that run late into the night, especially on wednesday. We also play a decent ammount of DDR (dance dance revolution) which makes quite a bit of noise with people stomping their feet and all. As it turns out they are not just staff members, they aren't RAs (Residential Advisors) they aren't even HDs (Hall Directors), they are the people who the RAs and HDs report to. Yeah, not people who I really want living below me. Bud Night (our weekly wednesday night party) went off without a hitch and so now I am less worried for the rest of the semester, at least they are not total dicks...they didn't go out of their way to get us in trouble. Last night at 3:30 in the morning though, as I was stumbling home tired as hell, I walked past something I am not used to seeing...one of these people in the apartment below just chatting with two guilford college security folks on the downstairs porch. Nothing bad happened, it was just a little creepy. This semester may not be as cool I had hoped...there may be some run-ins with authority. Eh, it's my last semester, I might as well push things to the limit.

Other cantidates for president

Although the field of democrat contenders for president is thinning rabidly now, there are still other cantidates running for president that get no mainstream press. There is an organization calledVoteSmart that cronicles a whole bunch of the "other" presidental cantidates and which of a bunch of issues they support (if they chose to fill out the survey...many did, more than half of the total) and there is this guy, Mr. Albert 'Al' Hamburg, who is running as an independant. I don't know much about him, besides this:

Eliminate Funding: j) Other: Welfare to big farms

and

Greatly Increase Funding: k) Other: program to stop school Bullying of litler kids

Wow. Just never really thought that was an issue worthy of mention in the defense spending section. Maybe in the education issues section...somehow I don't think he really has a grip on the size of the presidency.

I saw a standup poster for Jersey Girl

I saw a poster today for Kevin Smith's new movie Jersey Girl. I'm not sure if I will like it, I'm just glad Jennifer Lopez isn't going to be a major starring role in it. As a friend of mine pointed out, maybe some good did come from the movie Gigli. If it keeps Kevin Smith movies from sucking, I can't complain. (Or sucking worse)

Forget corporate crooks, go after senators

Apparently, through some computer glitch, Republican senators accessed private documents of their Democrat counterparts. Apparently they also strategically leaked some of them to the media. I keep hearing about all these compliants about new laws making it easier to prosecute computer related crimes. How can this not be a crime and why haven't these senators been arrested? What's up? I don't necessarily believe in laws that go after people who accessed documents that weren't protected (security through judiciary means...) but if we are going to have them to go after joe schmoe corporate guy and teenage kids, senators should get the same (or worse?) treatment by the courts. I hope this gets a lot of mainstream press, but I'm sure it won't.

Law and Order Coloring Book

As a follow up to the Law and Order Video Game, there is now a Law and Order Coloring Book. I want one.

State of the Union, the drinking game

Someone came up with a state of the union drinking game. It's a little late, cause it's 9pm now and it's about to be on, but it's still funny.

Amy made muffins, Yum!

Amy came over and made cranberry orange muffins this morning. They were quite yummy. Muffins are good, but they are so much better while they are still warm. Yummy!

Logins for brainsoup

Hmm...For a while I had a page setup where you could create an account, but when I went to Nucleus 2.5 Beta I accidentially lost those files. So for now only gabe and mike have accounts and no one else can register them. Although I initially liked the ideas of accounts, but without the key functionality of being about to easily look up post history by user it is pretty much useless. Nucleus also dumbly allows registered users to edit their own comments. So mike and gabe can edit their own comments if they want. Partly I like the idea (they are the kind of people that might fix their broken links, etc) but at the same time I think it is really lame. I'm not sure if this is still the way mike has phpbb setup on IBC, but at one point there was a time period that you could edit your own posts. Like any user could edit their own posts if they posted in the last 30mins or whatever. So if you messed your tags or doubled words, you could fix it. I want that. And I want better user management. Really, I want a better blog software than NucleusCMS, maybe it is time to look at MovableType...I think Cam and Amy like it, but it is just trading one set of drawbacks for another. I want a piece of better blogging software. And I don't know if I'm a good enough programmer to make that happen.

Holla for Thug Nation

Funny ad on tv for Thug Nation. It's some collection of hip-hop songs. But if you order now, they will give you the special gift of a free Holla for Thug Nation bumper sticker too. Dope. I really want that bumper sticker, but I don't want to spend the $18.98 + $3.49 shipping just for a bumper sticker.

I wanted some different formating for this entry.

Continue reading "Holla for Thug Nation"

Slow blogging weeks

As you may have noticed, my blogging in the last few weeks has been sparse and irregular. Things (busy christmas, new years, trip after trip to and from boston, moving back to school, bad ethernet in my room, wireless troubles, etc) are mostly over now. My network connectivity at guilford is finally stable again and things have been smooth sailing with serverpronto (the company hosting our server now) so that combo is stable again. Things should be a little more regular now. Hope everyone had a great holiday. I certainly did.

Killer coding ninja monkeys DO exist

(T-Shirt and Bumperstick from ThinkGeek. Link from daisy

VH1

Oh yeah, VH1 had an ad that slid up from the bottom while I was watching I love the 80s Strike back 1988 to buy a Def Leopard album on VH1.com for $8.88. Curious I went and found their album list. No album for 8.88, one for $9.98, but none for 8.88. Liars. Good advertising, but liars. Oh and something else...Sylvester Stallone was in porn. Learn something new every day.

I hate on bush as much as the next guy, but....

Recently news broke about Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary, having written a book about the bush administration planning the war in a Iraq days after bush entered office. This amazed me. Too bad it is probably false. I wish someone would come out with something concretely showing wrongdoing by bush, but it needs to be true.

Mars photos as a QuickTime VR...

Someone has apparently converted the NASA Mars images to Quicktime VR. Although we have all seen the flat images, they are much more impressive and interactive in this format. You can pan around and zoom in/out. Very cool.

I released a beta-quality palm game into the public domain

Summer 2002 I spent my spare time (no job!) learning C and programming a game for the palm. Well, I haven't done anything with it, so maybe I should just release it into the public domain. So I give you:

Tesserae for the Palm

Too bad the current version has a bug. I wish I could fix it, I just can't seem to dedicate enough time. I need a 4-5hr block to really get back into this stuff, which doesn't happen that much at school.

Can you take out your own stitches

I overheard another story at a local coffee shop. This time I was at javanet. Two women were chatting two tables away from me, one was talking about how she has had lots of trouble finding work, not enough work to get by, but work that was consistant and at a single location. For example: a 9-5 and not babysitting, elderly care, and/or small consulting jobs. Combined they are enough to get by, but it is very tiring to live you life jumping from one job to another. The first thing I heard her say when I came downstairs was "I think I have more debt than you. It's really hard to get out of debt." Then twenty-five minutes later, I started listening again and she was also talking about health insurance and how she doesn't have any. She told a story about how she took out her own stitches once. How it got infected and she got through it. All because she didn't have health insurance. She also told a story about how she took out a friend's stitches and they came out and he recovered fine. This woman was not exageratting. She was joking and playful about it, very upbeat. She also showed the woman she was chatting with, the top of the scar resulting from the removal. But she seemed to be one of the happier people I've heard in a long time. She was talking about how even though she has so much trouble with work and with money, she just has decided to stay happy and is happy. Just do what you have to do and keep yourself going day to day. Deal with things as you have to, but just realize you aren't starving and you live in country without the fear of death looming. She feels safe and is happy. I should take some cues from this woman. I'm not sure how some of this stuff from this previous entry about my personality type play into it. One of the quotes from the assessment was "blahblahblahblah tinker blahblahblahblah toys blahblahblahblah new toys".

Humanmetrics, Jung Typology Test

My brother and I were discussing personality tests tonight in reference to the fact that Hollywood Video uses them extensively in screening employees and as part of their initial application. I observed a friend of my taking this personality inventory test and I thought of the NEO-PIR test that I took for a project of keysamy's. My brother mentioned a few tests and I decided to take one, it was around the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Instrument model. Essentially it scores personality traits in four categories to one of two groups. Thus there are 16 possible personality types. (2^4). The categories are:

Extraversion-Introversion: describes where people prefer to focus their attention and get their energy?from the outer world of people and activity or their inner world of ideas and experiences
Sensing-Intuition: describes how people prefer to take in information-focused on what is real and actual or on patterns and meanings in data
Thinking-Feeling: describes how people prefer to make decisions-based on logical analysis or guided by concern for their impact on others
Judging-Perceiving: describes how people prefer to deal with the outer world-in a planned orderly way, or in a flexible spontaneous way

.

I scored a ENTP. That's Extroversion, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving. That test linked me to three different descriptions, one by D.Keirsey and one by each J. Butt and M.M. Heiss. I agree with all of them but Joe Butt's. Essentially it suggests I have the mind of an inventor. Present in 2% of the population. I'm not sure how that makes me feel. I'm curious what other people's classifications are.

Coffee shop interests...

I'm sitting at a coffee shop, it's a wierd sight that I haven't seen since like 1999 in the height of the tech boom. Two people, both probably in their mid-late 40s, chatting about their stock portfolios. The one guy was kind of showing off the diversity of his portfolio because he owns a shitload of different indexing mutal funds and other market section (small buisiness mutual funds, etc) funds, etc. It's the same sort of split I have on my IRA. It's wierd that people are chatting about their portfolios again. This isn't scientific, but it just my personal investor confidence rating. It's funny though, I just haven't seen people chat about this in public is in 1998-1999 at the height of the boom. Maybe people are more confident now.

Holy crap. My cable modem is twice as fast

I've been hearing on the radio recently ads for comcast, who happens to be my cable provider at home in amherst, that they recently doubled speeds. Without increasing cost. I have been very busy the last couple weeks...since before christmas...and so I haven't downloaded much. But two minutes ago I just downloaded a file and way blown away. 400KBytes/sec. Wow. When we got out cable modem originally it was capped at 1500Kbit download and 300kbit upload (187KBytes/37KBytes). Sometime earlier this year (fall break is the first time i saw this) I started getting 200-210Kbytes/sec download, but didn't notice any real change in upload. (I have since found that my upload has been reduced to 256Kbit, So since I bought my cable modem it has gone from a 1.5Mbit download to >=3.2Mbit down. It originally cost us $30/mo for service + $10/month for the cable modem rental. The price has gone up to $43/mo for service + $3/mo for modem rental. So the price has gone up 15% since Jan 2000, faster than the ~10% inflation rate experienced in the same period, but still. I'm not sure how I feel about cutting the upload, but I would pay an extra 5% (real value) for a 200%+ increase in speed. I wonder if I can actually get those speeds any time but now (5am).

I'm on the new server...

Everything should be a little more snappy. Brainsoup is now hosted at a real datacenter rather than just on the crappy cable modem. Hopefully everything still works. If not, let me know.

The End is Near

Oh no! I dropped the sausage

"Oh no! I dropped the sausage." -Emma

Your eyes suck at blue

I just read a really intersting page about how your eyes really suck at blue. Don't believe me? Go to the page and see. I never really knew why, but a place near us has blue backlit signs and they are fucking impossible to read at night. This is why.

Christmas is going to suck again this year

Last year's christmas was pretty sucky. I got a bunch of useful, but uninteresting stuff like tires for my car and my mom saying she would buy me boots. The presents I bought for people were pretty crappy too because I had only a week and half after I got back from germany to buy stuff and I didn't get very many gifts while I was in germany. This year though, I like every one of the gifts I am giving. I think almost everyone I'm giving gifts to will actually like what they get, which is something I'm not always sure of. Especially for people like my uncle, who we always get books (that is all he wants) and half the time he has read them already. (It's sick.) This year though I'm getting him a DVD box set of Indiana Jones and a nice bottle of Bully Hill Wine, which is always good. I'm also getting my twelve year old cousin a swiss army knife. I don't think that is too young to have that, but we'll see what his parents think. But anyways, I have a feeling that people will enjoy the gifts I give them, but the gifts I get will be, well, enh. Of course half of that is my fault because I am hard to shop for. Of course, this year I did put up a xmas wish list, but I didn't tell to many people about it. But anyways. Merry Xmas everybody.

John Stewart on the cover of newsweek

Everyone's favorite fake news anchor is on the cover of newsweek magazine. Way to go jon.

Cam's House and Crazy Cook's new home

Cam's House and Crazy Cook have a new home. Instead of being connected to our measly cable modem connection (300Kbit upload) they are now being hosted at a real provider (serverpronto). Although cam's house may be down for a few hours, maybe even a day, Crazy Chef is now livin large at a new domain name, keysamy.org. Congrats. And I hope everything works nicely there.

Backing up and resoring mysql

I spent the last ten minutes trying to figure out eactly how to export stuff from one mysql database to another one on a different machine. Until I found the simple answer:

To back up MySQL, log on as the root user and run:

mysqldump --opt -u user -p dbname > {path}/backup.sql

To restore the database run:

mysql -u user -p dbname < {path}/backup.sql

Simple. Easy. Why does every forum suggest I use packages like phpmyadmin to do this when it is this simple. Jeez.

Upgrading MovableType for cam and amy

I upgraded the software that runs crazy cook and cam's house (MovableType) to version 2.65. Move along people, nothing to see here.

The Fog of War

There is a new movie that came out last friday (in NY, LA and SF), The Fog Of War. It's documentary about Robert MacNamera. With footage and audio of him when he was secretary of defense and currently. He knows he wasn't right then. Which is amazing. "The conventional wisdom is don't make the same mistake twice. Learn from your mistakes. There'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake, you're going to destroy nations. We saw the vietnam as an element of the cold war, not what they saw it as, a civil war. We were wrong." I really want to see this film. I can't wait till it hits regular distribution. I hope it comes somewhere near me (I might even consider going to NYC to see this now).

A victory for medicinal marijuana users

Medical marijuana patients won a landmark legal victory Dec. 16 when the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government has no constitutional authority to prosecute two California women for possessing and growing marijuana for their personal medical use. Yay! I'm always in favor of things that keep John Ashcroft's power in check. Apparently using paramilitary raids on the homes of sick people isn't cool anymore. Who would have thought. This ruling, in combination with yesterday's ruling that the White House does not have the authority to detain American citizens apprehended on American soil indefinately without representation or trial, restores a little bit of my faith in the Democratic system. Today is a good day for civil rights.

(links from alternet and nytimes)

I feel broken.

Somehow I feel broken. I'm not sure why. Maybe part of it is that something is missing, but maybe not. So here I am at nearly four o'clock in the morning. I can't seem to sleep. I can't seem to get comfortable. There is nothing on television and I am tired of surfing the internet. A part of me knows that I should do the paper I need to do for monday, but honestly I don't seem to have the attention span for anything, let alone research and writing. Everytime I have trouble sleeping, I always feel like I'm giving up on trying to fall asleep too quickly. Normally I fall right to sleep in less than fifteen minutes, so if there any sort of delay, I feel like it takes forever. Tonight I could only lay in bed trying to sleep for like 30-40 minutes before I gave up. I feel broken.

Office Space for anti piracy?

I was browsing macslash and saw a funny ad. It was from the BSA (a reasonably evil anti piracy group). I really wonder if the guys who made office space ok'd this. I doubt it. Then wouldn't it be funny to have a copyright infringement suit against the BSA? One can only hope.

Continue reading "Office Space for anti piracy?"

Wierd printer inks

I am in the process of helping my brother print out some images for his introduction to digital studio class and they have some odd printers here. They have the Epson SP 1280 inkjet printers, but instead of having those small little ink cartridges that every inkjet has, they have something a little different. It is a syetm of external ink bottles (six of them, CCMMYK) that are attached via vinyl tubing to a modified ink catridge. It looks kind of funny, but the print quality seems ok. The systems are made by LumiFlo and as you might expect the cost savings are quite big over the epson cartridges even if the quality might be quite as good. But boy they look funny.

New York City signs and billboards 14th to 42nd street.

14to42.net is a project where this guy set out to document the signs between 14th and 42nd street. The age of still existing signs is amazing. Some of them are nearly a hundred years old. My vision of New York City has always been of a constantly changing and always re-inventing itself. Apparently, when you paint on brick though, most people won't bother to clean it up. It's an interesting history of New York City businesses through the lens of remaining signwork.

How to keep people out of nuclear waste for 10,000 years

This semester, in my resource economics class, one of my classmates did a report on the high level nuclear waste being generated and stored at the Sharon Harris nuclear facility in North Carolina. Essentially, the area was never designed for long-term containment of nuclear waste and as a result is rather unsafe and not very well protected. It is listed as one of the top 10 locations for risk of a terrorist attack. Apparently if a relatively small quantity of explosives, (certainly enough to fit on a truck, but maybe even what could be attached to an individual) were to make it into the facility (there isn't any super high-tech security here, just a chain link fence and a couple of security folks) they could cause a fallout that would affect something like five million people. (I forget the exact numbers.) So the proposed alternative is the Yucca mountain site. You may have heard of it. It is a potential storage facility in the middle of Nevada underground. It is estimated that this waste will take in excess of 10,000 years to break down to a level where is not extrememly toxic. One part of this we briefly discussed in class was how expensive it would be protect it from people breaking and other similar threats. But there is one part I did not truly consider the magnitude, keeping the average joe out of there. I imagined the site as fortress like place that in the center held the containment spaces for the nuclear waste. But in 10,000 years who knows if there will be any advanced civilization left and if so what language or abilities they will have. Apparently there is a group that thought about this in-depth. They prepared a document, Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia National Laboratories report SAND92-1382 / UC-721. The document offers some incredible insights in how one inspires awe from future generations expressing to them the grave nature of what is contained. The messages they are trying to express occur through different media (not only verbal or pictoral) and here they are:

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was impotant to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

Essentially the message they are attempting to send to future peoples is the opposite of almost every major human work ever created. They present a few design options: a spike field, a landscape of thorns, spikes bursting through a grid, leaning stone spikes, menacing earthworks and forbidding blocks. Here is an artists rendition of the thorns and of the spike field.

When I start to think about the intensity of an undertaking like this, I really begin to examine many of the idealistic forms that man has strived to create for, well...ever. Geometric shapes, circles, ratios, organization, etc. This project needs to express the exact opposite of all of these as to ensure that people don't mistake it for just another military complex. The scale of what they are talking about is an order of magnitude larger than the pyramids. And not as a testament to our greatness or the greatness of our gods, (the same?), but to show how stupid and foolish we were. How we made bad decisions and the least we can do to make up for them is try to protect future generations from dying as the result of our waste. I really recommend everyone read this report. When you start to think about this sort of thing, these are some pretty serious unintended consequences of nuclear power systems and ones that have nothing to do with us, our children or even our grandchildren. We have pretty much fucked things up for the next 10,000 years. Maybe we should stop.

Simple guide for securing a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless router

Recently, a friend gave me a BEFW11S4 router. I've been using it at school recently. At school I'm not worried about other people using my access point because I am far enough from any road/parking lot that wardrivers or other unwelcomed guests would not be able to connect. Also, the I don't feel like I am exposing myself to any risk different from having my computers on the regular network. So I haven't bothered to setup WEP (I use ssh and ssl for anything I care about), but at home I feel a little more nervous. So I started fiddling with the settings and now I am MAC address limited (only cards I specify in the router can connect), have a silly SSID and am 128bit WEP'd. I found a Gateway support question about securing a Linksys BEFW11S4 that is an excellent guide for anyone setup up their network. It recommends going a step further than I have gone (not broadcasting your SSID), but its nice to feel like I'm not missing anything.

Super big iPod

Hehe...Everyone else wants smaller and smaller mp3 players, I want a big one. This picture is part of a series making fun of the fact that with the N-Gage (Nokia's portable gaming device) to use the phone, you have to turn the N-Gage on it's side. It's wicked stupid. Like this:

4 year old smokes pot....dad goes to jail.

Um, who the fuck smokes pot with their 4 and 6 year old kids? What's wrong with people.

Selling snowballs in a snowstorm

According to

a story the New York Daily News, "During last week's NYC snowstorm, an entrepreneur set up shop in Times Square, selling snowballs for $1/pop. The young man was Gilberto Triplitt, a 28-year-old unemployed artist from Queens who attended LaGuardia High School and worked in a furniture store until it closed in the post-Sept. 11 downturn. He went into the snowball business Monday afternoon on Prince St. in SoHo. He reported selling six in 2-1/2 hours.

'It's really easy to sell them,' he said, to a reporter's surprise."

(link from BoingBoing.net)

I'm not sure how I feel about ServerPronto

I ordered a server from ServerPronto. On their front page they say "One Hour Activation!" (screenshot) and then they sent me an email that said: "This is not your account information email. You will receive your account information including username, password, and IP address within one (1) business day of the receipt of this email if you are paying by credit card. If you are paying by check or money order, please see below for further instructions." Can you say bait and switch? I paid by credit card. It's been 11hrs. Um...This sucks.

Missing exams is bad.

On wednesday I missed my resource economics exam. I went to my exam at 3pm and when I looked into the classroom there was another class there. I quickly realized that my exam was from 12 till 2:30 not at 3pm. Ooops. So I ended up getting up at 8:30 to go to a meeting, taking the Economics exam at 9:30, taking my History exam at noon, giving a presentation at six and then leaving to drive home after that. All this after staying up till doing work for my AI project and getting only an hour sleep. At least I'm at home now.

Winamp 5...what happened to winamp 4?

So I've been hearing about Winamp 5 coming out soon. I first saw reference to it because they had beta's on suprnova, but since then I've seen mentions of it on Justin's .plan (Justin is the lead developer of winamp) and download links from the winamp forums. I've been wondering for a while why there was a Winamp 2 and a Winamp 3 but no winamp 4. But mike had the answer. It's winamp 2 + 3 = 5. There is a FAQ on the winamp site that confirms this. I'm willing to try it out once they have an actual release and not just a beta. I'm still running winamp2, it's way more faster and if ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm finally going to do it - Cheap Dedicated Server!

I'm going to do it. I'm going to get a a dedicated server at ServerPronto for just $30/mo. Their financials just make sense. They have a $150 setup fee which covers the cost of hardware and then they are just renting you space/bandwidth. Not for the faint of heart (you have to maintain your own shit), but I'm still excited. (If you buy a server after clicking on that link I get $30...you know you want to...)

Winamp...In...Space (think pigs in space)

Apparently winamp is used on the ISS. Funny.

The semester winds down

I'm finishing up my schoolwork. Last night I finished my Resource Economics paper and started work on my AI project. I just got out from taking my Economics of Latin America final and I think I did all right. I also realized late last night that I couldn't go to my History exam as it was planned for thursday...luckily my professor is nice and is letting me take it early in the day instead.

1700 AWOL American GIs

JapanToday reports that "1,700 U.S. soldiers have deserted in Iraq". I haven't seen coverage of this in American news media and although the source may not be perfect, I'm curious. 1700 AWOL is a lot. This article quotes 86 in North Carolina alone this year. A google news search for AWOL produces only a link to those two articles and then a bunch of individual AWOL cases and stories from local newspapers. What's the deal. Why have I not heard this from main stream media? Or even alternative media like Alternet or The Valley Advocate even have a mention. Odd.

Windows Media Player for Solaris

There has been just one thing keeping from leaving Windows and x86 altogether and moving to Solaris. And that's windows media player. How can I play my ASF/WMV files under Solaris you might ask? Until today I thought it impossible, but my prayers have been answered. (Apparently they were answered in mid-2000, but god forget to drop me an email)

Two classes down, two to go

With the exception of the three final exams I have to do (one each of the next three days) I have now completed all the regular coursework for two of my classes. My Economics of Latin America course and my 19th Century European History course. For the latter, I just wrote a three page paper and three one page papers in the last three hours. I wish I could write two pages an hour all the time.

So after going out to dinner (in like 10minutes) with amy, I will do the final draft of my Resource Economics paper (overdue) and then get started on the last of my regular coursework: a 7page paper and a final project for my aritifical intelligence class. I could really get all this done even though I totally deserve to fail all my classes because I have done so little work over most of the semester. I always procrastinate, it's been getting worse and worse over the last few years, but it seems until I actually fail something I don't know if I will be able to improve my behavior. It's simple psychology. If I keep getting rewarded with good (enough) grades, why work harder. One thing I am worried about is shifting from the analytical writing papers way of thinking (what I have been doing all this semester whenever I have done schoolwork) to the programming way of thinking necessary for my Artifical Intelligence final project. I haven't programmed in Java in well over a year, I hope I remember it all.

Too much work

I'm not sure I physically have enough time to get done the work I need to do. I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep last night and didn't sleep very well anyways. So getting up at a reasonable hour today was near impossible. I just wish this week was over. The fact that I only have four days left is not a comfort (I will have to leave in four days, but will I be done) and I also know that after all the trouble I have here, I will then drive 13hours home. Hopefully I can get my shit done. If not? Well, maybe I will be here in the summer.

Simple solutions to everyday problems make me happy

When I used to work at the helpdesk at my school, one of the things we had to do was restock printers with paper. The floor of the building where the 24hour computer labs are had three printers. Although there were a couple specialty printers, like a HP Color Lasjet 4550HDN, a plotter and couple specialize inkjets, we spent most of our time refilling two, high volume Ricoh Aficio 1045 printers, each with 4 one-ream trays (Letter, Letter Rotated, Legal and 11x14) and one 4 ream high capacity tray on the side. Almost no one printed to anything but Letter (8.5 x 11) pages, so the legal/11x14 trays got refilled once every week or week and a half. The letter trays on the other hand needed constant attention. During finals we were going through a couple of cases of paper a day, which is a lot of paper. 10 reams per case * 500pages per ream = 5000-1000 sheets a day.

The average person has great difficulty refilling paper on a printer that has 5 trays. Especially since the high capacity tray requires that it be lowered (pushing a button) before opening if you want to refill it. So our school pays lab monkeys minimum wage to refill printers. Another issue with this, although you get it with a little bit of experience, loading a ream at a time into a paper tray is difficult. Duke does things a little differently. Rather than buying two large capacity printers for each lab, like us, their library puts a mid-range HP Laserjet 4200N amongst the computers such that there are four computers for every printer. These printers are fast enough to get documents out (30ppm) and combined are much better suited to deal with the load of a high volume lab (4-5 printers per lab, 120-150ppm) as opposed to our centralized solution (1 printer per lab, 45-50ppm). And they both cost about the same.

Here is the simple solution (that took too long to setup, but I don't care): Anyone who has a clue can put paper in a printer that has one tray. Duke puts a stack of paper out in 1/3 ream groups on the reference desk (10-20ft from the computers stacked in alternating orientations) and anyone who notices their printer is out of paper walks over and picks up one or two groups of paper and drops them in their printer. No time spent by staff members, users wait less time when their printer needs paper, and users don't have to open their own ream packs (something people also find suprisingly difficult.) The solution is so simple that most people would never think about it because it just works, but why does my school keep paying students to run through the labs every hour checking and refilling paper. Geeks like toys that are complicated and do everything in the world. Users just want to get their documents printed in a timely fashion.

I am a sexy bitch

My name is Pete and I am a sexy bitch. There is no one as sexy as me. Sometimes I strut around in my leopard print thong in front of the mirror and admire myself. It's great how good that thong looks on me. My roommates find it particularly sexy when I sit on the couch in the living room in my thong and drink beer. Like I said, I'm a sexy bitch.

How rich are you?

Check out the Global Rich List to see how rich you are as compared to the rest of the world.

(Link from a comment on philg's blog that I had forgotten to blog about, but gabe's blog reminded me.

I got bumped for $200

While coming back to school I a ticket to fly from Hartford to Cincinnati to Greensboro. Two legs, not a big layover in Cincinnati so I figured everything would be fine. Then while I was waiting near the gate trying to charge up my laptop before getting on the plane I heard something wonderful: "we are looking for volunteers to give up their tickets for the flight to greensboro". So I inquired. It was not the dream deal I had hoped for (get bumped to a flight three hours later a get a big voucher) but instead something more complex. I would stay the night in Cincinnati (actually I was in northern Kentuky, but that is beyond the point) at the Country Inns and Suites hotel, then fly out in the morning to Charlotte and then take a limo (not the stretch kind, but like a Lincoln Continental) to Greensboro. In exchange I would get the free hotel room, a $10 food voucher and a $200 travel voucher good on Delta/Comair. I thought about it. I don't have a job right now and was 20hrs of my time worth $200...$10/hr for not doing anything? I couldn't resist. I'm not sure what I will use that $200 voucher for. Possibly for going somewhere during spring break (Iowa?) or I might be able to sell it to my mom and brother for when they come down to Greensboro for graduation. As it turns out, the Country Inn was quite nice, they had high speed internet access and I could get Dominoes delivered right to my room. Quite nice. And they also had this program, Book It and Return where you can borrow a book from them and if you return it to any other hotel location they will donate $5 to ProLiteracy an internation group that sponsers libraries and other literacy programs. So that's how I spent my Sunday night/monday morning.

Let's nuke the rest of the wolrd

I was reading a salon article today about a few different topics, but one peaked my interest. The idea that if America ends up having to fight a many-fronted war we will not have the ground troops to do so and the only solution will be to use nukes. They cite a blog entry by a guy who does military history as a source. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but the guy seems to be quite insightful. Essentially the question is the following: if another country used nukes against us, would we use them back. I would have to say a resounding yes. There is no question in my mind whether almost everyone in power in the U.S. would see this as a dick size contest because we would know our dick is bigger (we have the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons). Essentially during the coldwar because of MAD (Mutually Assured Distruction) we formally recognized that the USSR had a big dick too so there was never a need to pull it out and measure. This is not the case with current terrorists, we constantly feel the need to say how much they are cowards, "evil doers" and the like, but what it boils down to is this...They started the fight (we may have provoke them, but it's unimportant for this argument) and we need to finish it. Either by comparing dick size to the world or just by knowing that our dick is bigger and so there is no need pull it to deal with a single nuclear attack.

Dick dick dick dick. Yep. I made penis metaphors.

Snails are smart too

Some people are sick. And other people just like to make a snail navigate salt walled maze. Why didn't I ever think of this as a kid?

(Link from ben)

Brainsoup was down for the last 12hrs, not that anyone would notice

Last night I swapped out our router for another one (this one with wireless). When that happened, comcast changed our IP address (doh!). I didn't fix it until this morning. Not that any of you would notice it being down.

Television shows in order are better

I've decided I like television shows when I get to watch them in consecutive order much better than if I watch them as they first air. I find them much more enjoyable when I get the ongoing plot elements and really understand everything as it goes on. I found this out a while ago when I had downloaded entire seasons at time of shows that I never saw live (Undeclared, Scrubs, That 70s Show, etc). Recently I have watching Sportsnight (last night and tonight) and Rosanne (almost every night for the last two weeks). The networks are finally catching on to this after the sucess of the Family Guy volumes one and two was the #2 selling television DVD of all time. Enough so that Fox is considering making new episodes. Nothing could make me happier.

German dude eats other German dude

The creepy german guy who ate a guy whom he met on the internet (and who wanted to be eaten) is going on trial. For those who didn't learn about this before, there is a previous BBC article talking about it as well as a kuro5hin article that goes into a little more depth. Although fucked up, I believe this guy had a right to be eaten if he wanted to be. I guess this follows in the same logic about assisted suicide in my mind. Possibly the guy should have gotten some counseling, but really if you want to end your life being cut up and fed to someone else, who am I to say no?

(link from IBC)

Free Hummus

Hey kids, I was looking at the package of some hummus I bought and they had a website. Being the loser that I am, I went to their website. Not only can you get coupons for filling out a survey, but also if you enter their photo captioning contest they will give a coupon for a free tub of hummus and you have the chance of winning a Hat, a T-Shirt and coupons for 12 free tubs of hummus. I'm such a sucker for free hummus. I highly recommend everyone at least enter the photo captioning contest, I mean really - it's a free tub of hummus.

Jonathan Brandis from SeaQuest DSV is dead

Apparently Jonathan Brandis, who played Lucas on SeaQuest DSV killed himself earlier this month. I used to watch that show for the first couple seasons, but then they ran out of story ideas and went to space and stuff and so it sucked. No word on whether the pez dispenser made it.

China's filter aren't very effective

I was chatting with my friend Daisy who is current in Bejing on IM the other day and we were chatting about China's spotty censorship of the internet and what they did and not block. I just saw this article in wired about how the censorship just doesn't work for some things. Specifically how do you censor text that is part of an image? I can't think of an easy way to do it.

Dean dodged the draft...good for him

According to Howard Dean dodged the draft through an obscure medical condition. This will certainly become an issue in the upcoming election and might make many people think twice about voting for him. Of course, if there were currently a draft I bet I would probably think about trying to do the same thing. This is the sort of thing that makes him more endearing to me. Many political folks got out of going to Vietnam by joining the National Gaurd and that only bugs the American public less, but avoiding the military altogether is even better.

Bush is giving back to his supporters

Apparently the upcoming energy and medicare bills will benefit those who have helped contribute to the bush campaign the most. At least according to a washington post article. What a suprise...Bush knows how to give back to those who give him the most. Too bad it will be at the expense of the american public.

I don't want to die. I'm not going to die.

This semester at school is the hardest I've ever had. I have three majorly demanding courses and one just pretty demanding course. It's fucking rough. I worked non-stop 18 hour days Sunday, Monday and Tuesday (including wednesday morning). I got all of the work done I needed to do for the first three days of the week, but I just couldn't keep up the pace I needed on wednesday night...every wednesday we have a party in my apartment (every wednesday without exception)...and I tried to go and do work and just couldn't do it. I was too burned out. So since then I haven't done any work. It's now Sunday afternoon and I have more work than I have the time to do. I have a two page paper and a three page paper for my History that are overdue. My 6-7 page term paper (which I haven't done any research for) for History is due on Tuesday. I have a 6-7 page paper (which I also haven't done any research on) for my Artificial Intelligence class due tommorow. I also have the final version of my course long research paper and "research journal" for my Economics of Latin America course. Of course, I don't have a research journal - and there is no time to make one. Combine all that with the fact that our main file server on campus Hobbs, not to be confused with out authenitication server Calvin, was down all of yesterday so even when I went to try to do work it was impossible because all of my documents were unavailable. Combine all of that academic work with the fact that my girlfriend Amy is also super stressed out about her work...it makes for a very stressful no-fun situation.

So about an hour ago, I was just sitting here on my bed trying to do some reading for that 3 page history paper, but failing miserably and I just said, outloud, with no one else around: "I don't want to die." As soon as I came to the conscious realization of what I said, I then said (again aloud) "I'm not going to die." It amazes me how much stress an artifical thing like academic work can impose upon you. Somewhere subconsciously I was actually afraid of dying as a result of too much school work.

I went wardriving...again

Last night a couple of friends and I tried to get wardriving to work again...I got Mandrake Linux 9.2 installed. I got kismet installed. I got GPSDrive installed. I recompiled the kernel module for my wireless card. Almost everything was working. But then the batteries on my GPS went dead...and something else kept fucking up too. So we just drove around laughing fiddling with NetStumbler. I'm a dork.

Yahoo is changing your marketing preferences...again

Although they did this once before, Yahoo! is again adding a new marketing preference check-box that is checked by default. If you have a Yahoo account, I highly recommend you read what yahoo has to say about it and then make sure to verify your yahoo preferences. Although many people have reported Yahoo changing their preferences from no to yes, everything on mine seems to be on the up and up.

(link from slashdot)

Best. Cartoon. Ever. (Your right cam)

I'm going to have to agree with cameron here...

Best. Cartoon. Ever.

Late night library wireless

Night before last, I was working at the Library until 2am when they closed. I was working on a paper for my Resource Economics class. As I walked outside, I was not really psyched about the possibility of walking across campus back to my apartment to do work there, so I just sat down on the bench outside the library and did work there. For two and half hours. I got a lot of work done. I imagine that when my library put in wirelss (100% coverage inside the library) they weren't thinking about the fact that it might help someone (Me!) get work done after hours. I would never had been able to get my work done without network access...I probably would have gotten it done at my apartment, but since I was outside and it was 2-4am in the morning I could listen and talk out loud as much/loud as I wanted it. I dig having a laptop with wireless...it's changing the way I get work done.

Talking heads on NPR

Yesterday morning as I was coming back from having breakfast at a diner, I heard David Byrne of the Talking Heads on NPR. The interview was not anything particularly groundbreaking, but at the same time, no individual aspect of the Talking Heads stands out as the most important one, but it's pretty clear to me that everything about them is fucking awesome. I recommed you take the four minutes to listen to the interview. They have it in RealMedia or WindowsMedia. They also have an Web-Only extended interview that I haven't had a chance to listen to. I really need to listen to more talking heads...as cameron and todd like to say: "they rock my face off".

Random shit...mp3 close to NPR

Something really weird just happened to me. I tried to type NPR on the keyboard and accidentally type MP3 instead. When I looked down I realized that they aren't that far off from each other. Just random odd, stupid shit.

Gay marriage is going to be legal in Mass....Yipee!

So according to a decision yesterday by Massachusetts' highest court, Gay marriage cannot be banned and gives the legislature 180 days to make it possible. It's about time we got a fucking clue. The conservative reaction to this make me ill...they've made a call for a federal constitutional amendment specifically banning it...yeah, that's what we need, an ammendment no guaranteeing the rights of all people, but guaranteeing second class citizens. Somehow I don't see that happening. So essentially this made my day, except for the fact that our govenor Mitt Romney is opposing this ruling:

"Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I will support an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution that makes that expressly clear. Of course, we must provide basic civil rights and appropriate benefits to nontraditional couples, but marriage is a special institution that should be reserved for a man and a woman."

Mitt Romney - You're a dick. And this quote will poison your political career forever. Good for you.

(links from salon, nytimes, gaurdian and npr)

My Internet was down yesterday and I've been working too hard

I haven't been able to post an entry for a while now because of a combination of me doing lots and lots of school work since Sunday night and then yesterday our school had some sort of network problem so they shut off all connectivity to the dorms. Apparently were getting something like 10,000 connections a second to our firewall (port 80) from on campus. Because our network admin is a fucking tool and did not have (or know how to setup) and tools to find out where those connections were coming from. Yes, he needed to purchase monitoring tools that would allow him to see where these connections were coming from on campus. So apparently we spent about $1000 on some piece of software so he could figure out what was going on. Had they called me (not that I work for them...) I would have walked in their with my laptop and just captured a few minutes of traffic with TCPdump or hell, they could have even used WinDump (TCPDump for windows)... it's not like we need some hard core piece of software to do this sort of thing kids...we are only talking about 6Mbits/sec worth of traffic. Just setup a port on our switch in mirror mode and away we go. Fucking retards...

I want a lock for my computer

I'm working in my school's library right now and everytime I walk away to go get a print out or go to the bathroom I get a little nervous about leaving my computer unattended. My laptop has a nice little space to put a lock into, but I have no lock. I don't want anything super secure here, just enough to repel the casual criminal. And so that if I ever felt the need to leave my laptop somewhere even less secure (Duke Library) or something, I could without worrying the whole time I was gone. Again, anyone need a christmas present for me? (This begging is just getting sad.)

MP3.com is gone. R.I.P.

MP3.com has been purchased by CNet. A moment of silence please.

Pick your own drugs - Self Perscription

PrivacyRX. Online consultation/perscription/ordering of life enhancing drugs like Viagra, Ambien (Sleep Med), Phentermine (Appetite Supression), Propecia (Hair Loss), etc. It's sick. They list all the drugs they perscribe/sell (they have licensed doctors onstaff) and with only one online consultation you can get your drugs. The individual drug pages list cost first, then what it is used to treat. Essentially this is a license for the average person to perscribe medication to themselves. Ummm, No. I consider myself reasonably smart, but I wouldn't want to trust my own self-assesment to choose my own drugs and pick the dosages which `i thought was right'. SCARY.

Trojan

Brits have a way better sense of humor than we do. I'm not totally sure about it, but Trojan Games is fucking hilarious. It is a site about olympic like games involving sex. I especially recommend the video highlights page.

(link from ben)

TrackBacks on the rise

In case you hadn't noticed already, I setup TrackBacks. I had them before for outgoing so I could ping other blogs, but now other people can ping me.

Kristina got a new car

Nifty!

Free speech at private colleges

Phil Greenspun's weblog had an entry about MIT bitch-slapping a couple of students who through a party with a possible racist theme. My school recently had a party similar to this, (Pimps n Hoes) but instead of it being a student party, it was one organized and run by student life. I heard no one complain about it until a few days after the party happened. All of a sudden everyone and their mother was offended by the objectification of women, the stereotypical images of black men as pimps, blah blah blah. So they had a forum (Free Registration Required) about it. Wow that accomplished a lot. Although most people on campus would seem to disagree with me, I think this party was just fine. There were not only both white and black pimps, but also female pimps and male hoes. Yeah it's racist. Or something. Right.

Dope Film: Lost in Translation

I went and saw Lost in Translation tonight. Fucking awesome. I haven't seen a movie that I liked that much in a long time. The combination of the Francis Ford Coppola cinematography and the incredible acting of Bill Murray. I don't really know anything about her, but apparently Sofia Coppola directed...I think that must be FFC's daughter. I highly recommend you check it out.
Continue reading "Dope Film: Lost in Translation"

Nat Heatwole...the affidavit...

Nat (Nathaniel Heatwole)'s Affidavit. Courtesy of the The Smoking Gun.

(from mike)

What platform do presidential candidates run on their webservers

LinuxJournal has an article detailing what platform and which webserver each of the canidates are using to run their website. What a suprised that the RNC is running IIS on Windows 2000 and the DNC is running Apache on Linux. Go linux, I mean go democrats!

(from slashdot)

The cheat-o-lantern

Dope. That's all there is to say.

A book I think I want

While browsing through an interestingly organized photoblog on I found something interesting, a comic called Morning Routine. I enjoyed some of this guy's other comics, but this comic is different...he's toying with Micropayments through BitPass. For a mere $0.20 I could look at that comic. I'm not sure I'm willing to actually do that...I've thought about it intellectually before, but I just can't see myself paying 20-50 cents here and there very often. I would like somehow to compensate authors for their hard work (even if it only brought me a moment enjoyment) but not until I am very comfortable financially could I really get into this.

But anyways, that comic is part of a collection called True Porn. It's a special collection of comics about sex and porn. If someone is looking for a xmas present for me, it's only $18.95 shipped. <wink>

Googlisms

While googling a few minutes ago I stumbled across googlism.com. A project to see what google "thinks" about certain people/places/things. Although some of them are broken (to short, broken adverbial phrases, text processing errors, etc) some are interesting...guilford college ("guilford college is the third oldest coeducational institution in the nation" -- I didn't even know that.), Amherst Regional High School ("amherst regional high school is at the center of a debate on free speech after the third attempt to suspend a student who published a newsletter that school".) So then I figured it out. All their software does is search for "amherst regional high school is" and then grab the parts from the results. Pretty simple, but leads to odd results.

I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense

The lawyer for a man convicted of shooting and killing a policeman apologised on Monday for singing the Bob Marley hit "I Shot The Sheriff" as he was leaving the courtroom.

(link)

I invented a new word for Flawed Logic - flogic

I was chatting with cam today and mispoke and instead of saying "Flawed Logic" I said flogic. I thought it was cool and I am going to start saying it. Too bad other people thought of it seperately.

Killing Dolphins is fun

"Fishermen work on a boat filled with freshly caught dolphins while a diver prepares to submerge in the blood-filled water near the fishing town of Taiji in Wakayama Prefecutre in this photo taken Friday, Oct. 6, 2003 by American anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Fishermen in this western Japanese town regularly conduct dolphin hunts during the October to April season. They've caught more than 60 striped dolphins so far this year under the government quota system which allows 22,275 to be caught. The meat is usually canned andsold in supermarkets.(AP Photo/Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)" (link)

Rent isn't what it is cracked up to be

I went to see the musical Rent last night. A bunch of the people who I went with were really excited to be there and really enjoyed it. My reaction to it: "eh". Some of the songs were cool, I'm glad I went to see it, but still...I wish I still had my $35.

Every once in a while I see a reference to stampede linux and laugh

Today, while reading a Debian manual, there was a reference to the fact that it could handle and convert stampede slp packages to debian deb. Although few people (even the super geeky) may remember Stampede Linux, remains of what it was/could have been are littered throughout the web...anyone got an alpha for running stampede? In high school, we used to run an off-hours mirror on the school's T1 of stampede and every time I would log in I had it list all the different hostnames that had connected...I remember there were some people from the army, someone from kodak as well as numerous other random hostnames.

Schick Quattro - 4 blades...

I'm watching tv right now, and I just saw a commercial for the Schick Quattro. Apparently the Gillette Mach3 isn't enough, you need FOUR blades. Right... Oh and apparently Gillette is suing Schick because their blade angles are too much like the Mach3.

Oh, nat was on the daily show last night

My old roommate nat was on the daily show last night and I taped it. When I get a chance, I am going to encode it and put it up here. It is quite funny to watch your friends being made fun of on national television. I should really send him a copy of it too, I'm sure he didn't get a chance to watch it. In the mean time, if you have RealPlayer, you can watch the clip from comedy central. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Local Quicktime Mirror.

RFID tracking in schools

If you haven't heard about RFID tags, they are proximity card readers. When you put the RFID tag/card within a range of a reciever, the tag transmits its unique number to the reciever. Recently firms including walmart and others have embraced the technology for inventory. Essentially for them it would be a barcode on crack because instead of requiring manual scanning by a person or device, just having the tag near the scanner would be enough. Sounds ok at first...the same way that Wal-Mart encouraged (pushed?) their suppliers to use barcodes for better inventory a number of years ago. Except when you start treating elementary school children like inventory. I remember what school was like, imagine if your parents got a letter, or you got called to the office because you had spent to much time in the bathroom a few days in a row. (I should never have to explain to anyone else the fact that I had the runs.) I can only imagine, students will be guilty until proven innocent...the RFID tag reader says you skipped class on thursday...the teacher doesn't remember cause she doesn't take attendance anymore, so prove to me you were there.

Off to the mountains

So yesterday I skipped class and went off to the mountains with my girlfriend. We decided just to drive towards the mountains and figure it out as we got there. We ended up driving around and ending up at Stone Mountain State Park. After taking a walk through the woods to see the waterfall there (very steep, but very little water in fall) we were walking back to the car and in the woods we saw a couple of deer on the left, and then a couple of pheasants on the right hand side of the trail. It was awesome. As we were driving out of the park, the was a field to the right of the road and in it about a dozen deer. A few of them were young and playful...boxing, jumping on the older deer, chasing each other around. It was awesome. After we left that area, maybe 100yrds further down the road there wass another 5 deer on the other side of the road. Pretty freaking cool. I ended up taking a bunch of pictures too, so when I get those back, I will put them up on pix.duckies.org. The real question (that I still haven't found a clear answer to) is what a group of dear is called. Is it a herd or a flock?

Running Nucleus 2.5

I am now running Nucleus 2.5 Beta. Yippee. If you have any problems, let me know. There shouldn't be any difference for y'all as most of the changes are on the admin side. Also it now supports a couple XML-RPC blogging implementations. That means maybe I can blog while ofline and then upload it later. (among other things)

QOTD: nat made portal of evil news

All those other news sources were interesting, but cameron informed me, that "nat made portal of evil news". This is too crazy. I shouldn't know people who are the focus of national news.

Is it Nathaniel Heatwole or Nat Heatwole

It's really funny to see all of these stories in cnn, nytimes, the gaurdian, etc about Nathaniel Heatwole. It's wierd though, cause I can't think about him as a Nathaniel...he's just Nat. Not Nat Heatwole, just Nat. Its wierd and funny how everyone else who reads those articles knows him by a name that I didn't even recognize until someone else told me. Wierd, wierd, wierd.

Funny Fat People

It bothers me when people don't realize why their behavior results in them being overweight. Like people who drive everywhere, always take the elevator and eat 4000 calories a day and somehow seem confused they aren't fit as a wistle. Of course, there is the opposite side of the spectrum as shown in these slashdot comments. I haven't laughed this hard in a while. The comment..."cabs and computers. gee, i bet you're fit." and the response... "Like a bowl full of jelly, bitch."

I saw Kill Bill Part I...don't bother

I watched Kill Bill the other night. It was ok. If don't know, essentially Quentin Tarantino was making this film and realized that the story would take 3hrs to tell...so instead of making a 3hr film (slef indulgant) he made two parts (innovative, or something) each 1.5hrs long. Needless to say, I enjoyed watching the first part, but the story never really came together and so there was no closure or even really enough character or plot development to justify a seperate release. I am interested in watching the sequel, but god am I glad I didn't pay for part I. Maybe when they are both out on DVD I will sit down and watch them both. Probably not until though.

But what was the terrorist roommate wearing

According to this article, "Heatwole appeared in court wearing a short-sleeve, button-down shirt, olive-colored khakis." Ah, and this is relevant because we know only terrorists would wear olive khakis. Burn your olive khakis, to keep america safe and to keep Nat in jail.

not just somebody sneaking stuff on planes, my old roommate

As it turns out, the person who smuggled stuff onto planes was not just some random person from guilford, but my old roommate (Spring 2003). Essentially he did it to show that the security at airports was insufficent and ineffective. (duh). You can search Google, Google News for "Nathaniel+Heatwole" and find the information you want to see. The most in depth article I've seen is from Salon's wireservice.

In case anyone was wondering, he wasn't a scary or outspoke person. He was quite smart and worked hard, he just kept to himself most of the time. It's really funny though, cause when we used to talk sometimes we would bring shit like this up...hypotheticals and devils-advocate scenarios how essentially all laws designed to curb terrorism (added airline security, patriot act, etc) were either poorly designed from the get-go and gave overly broad powers or were narrowly focused and treated the symtom and not the problem. But anyways. Just amusing. I guess this is my brush with fame. Thank god he's not my roommate anymore...not just because of the media attention, but I like having a single better.

Somebody at Guilford tried to sneak stuff on a plane

A Guilford College Student is stupid enough to sneak stuff onto planes. Jeez. We're national now baby.

I saw my dad last night

I hadn't seen my dad in quite a while and I got a chance to hang out and talk with him last night when he came up to visit. It was cool.

I'm sick, it sucks.

I'm sick. Runny nose, congestion, etc. It sucks. At least I'm at home though, so I have nice warm bed to sleep in. I just hate hearing a nasty piercing squeel every time I blow my noise.

Spammers are evil, but 471 years in jail and $117mil in fines is a bit much

I think people who spam are evil. Quite evil in fact. But I think the possibility that someone might get 471 years in prison with a $117 million fine for what I would consider a civil offense is a little much. Spamming sucks, but is it identity theft? If I send a postal letter with someone elses return address, I wouldn't consider that identity theft. It might be fraud, but I didn't assume someone's identity.

Law and Order Video Game

Amy saw a commercial on TV for Law and Order, the video game, part 2. Cameron and I thought she was crazy. How could there be a law and order video game and if someone was foolish enough to produce such a game, why would they ever make a sequel. Guess what? It's true.

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The games are Law & Order: Dead on the Money and Law & Order 2: Double or Nothing. $29.95 each at amazon.

Christian Debt Consolidation

I get funny spam every day.

I just had a dream

I just woke up. I dreamed that I was a soldier of some sort and I remember dreaming about some combat. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember a flash bang of some sort going off (disorientation and deafness) and then as someone came closer not realizing where I was, I dropped two bullets into their chest. This person quickly sprayed me with a submachine gun and all of a sudden everything was not only quiet (it was quiet from the flash bang, that had felt like someone removed the pressure in my ears, like the drum popped) but overly quiet and things because white. I remember observing the situarion from above and making the realization that I was wounded and soon after the follow up realization that I had actually died. Then I remember a conversation with my girlfriend (of course she could talk to me even though I was dead, duh.... in which she said: "I want to come with you."

Wierd dream, eh?

Michael Moore has a new book...

New book by Michael Moore, Dude, where's my county?. He was on the daily show tonight and was kind of funny, not really funny, but kind of sort of funny.

Anybody want to buy an air guitar

I've always wanted an air guitar (mine was a cheap model) now I can buy one on ebay.

Interesting thoughts on copyright law

I stumbled across a blog entry of Brian Carver...It makes some interesting points and raises issues relating to the current form of copyright law. Additionally he makes the claim that "Copyright is a system fundamentally designed to deprive artists of the rights to their creations." Although I agree with him in part, removing the right of transferrabilty make me remember some of my economics readings I did recently. Most notably the fact that if you can't easily transfer your works, it means that you may not take as great an interest in taking care of them. Also, I have odd feelings about whether a spouse is entitled to your copyrighted works after you die. If I spend 10 years of my life developing some intellectual property (be it music, software or whatever) while my spouse paid for all my necessities by working a real paying job, shouldn't she be entitled to some return on her investment if I die 2 days after a discovery? I certainly don't like the current unlimited (95+ years) system, so maybe we should start talking about what would be a better one.

Civilization II Gold Edition

Civ2 multiplayer rocks my world. We got four people (3 laptops wireless, 1 desktop) playing. I want to play some more later on tonight. Funfunfun.

Pass the barcardi to my friends waging Jihadi

We came up with a line that eminem or some other terrible rapper could use. Pass the barcardi to my friends waging Jihadi. I think I may personally bring the rath of terrorists upon myself.

Lose the belly, thin the thighs, make new friends

Apparently if I go on a diet -- I'll make new friends, at least according to this ad. Is this sort of thing supposed to work? Its just insulting.

Gabe switched to Nucleus

Gabe changed his website over to Nucleus. Yipee.

I like approximate rhyming...

I heard a song that used aproximate rhyme today. Yay! Depot and People.

Banner ads are getting better.

I got a very targeted and very appropriate banner ad today. I was looking at the tvguide listings and when I looked at the details page for a show there was a McDonalds banner ad for the McGriddle. When you mouse over the ad, it had a map of McDonalds locations nearby. How did they get my location? I told them my zip code to get appropriate television listings. Smart. I dig it. Too bad it would be hard (or at least not simple) to reproduce it here.

Hummer vs. Hybrid

Hummer vs. Hybrid, the movie. This california election thing has gotten out of control.

Maybe I can be a l33t mensa member too

According a Mensa Webpage, "In Mensa, there are many ways to be recognized as the best. From community service to esoteric cultural knowledge [...] to creating a l33t home page -- through one program or another, you could be recognized nationally for your efforts." I'm not sure I would recognize the intelligence of people using l33t Speak.

Visual Thesaurus

I stumbled across something super cool this morning, Visual Thesaurus. It's a visual way of representing word relationships (antonyms, is derived from, is similar to, is participle of, etc). There are all sorts of options for visualization of this information, (I like auto-pilot off, 2d display). I find it fascinating how interrelated all parts of our language are. I could play with this thing for hours.

IQs are interesting

I found a really interesting webpage that has a Definition of IQ. It also has all sorts of crazy interesting information about the distribution of IQs as well as some odd observations like "1 out of 10 African-Americans has an IQ below 59". 59. Wow. That just blows my mind, 59 is like had trouble getting through elementary school. Also "The average IQ of all college professors is 130, which lies within the upper 3% of the general public." Wow pretty much sums it up. I could only find one place with a free IQ test. I'm sure it is grossly inaccurate but for what its worth, it scored me a 131. Yippee.

A three quarter ton rat! Holy shit!

Guess what, some folks in Venezuela found remains of a 1500 pound rodent. That's way bigger than the ones I use to keep door-to-door salesmen at bay.

Kudzu Wish is an awesome band

I saw Kudzu Wish last night for their cd release party. It was pretty cool. They had it at this club, Ace's Basement, which is really just in the basement of this really cheap hotel in Greensboro, it was a little sketchy, but still a nice atmosphere. The new album, Reverse Hurrican is really quite good. For those unfamiliar with Kudzu Wish, they are kind of hard emo, or something like that. They are a little hard to describe, but quite a cool band. I highly recommend you pick up a copy for yourself.

Microsoft calls it's new product RMS

Microsoft released a new Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology called Windows Rights Management Services or RMS for short. Yep, when I think of RMS, I think of some one else. Just a little a little different. (slashdot link)

We have got to stop killing people in Iraq

Really folks, this is just getting silly.

Spock likes to takes pictures of naked women

Who knew. Leonard Nimoy put out a photography book filled with pictures of naked chicks. Odd. Read about it at salon.

iTunes for windows - mid-october

According to Newsweek (via MSNBC) iTunes for windows is coming out mid-october. Yet another thing for me to spend money I don't have on. Although I am psyched about having some possible competetion for the best audio player every made...Winamp.

I want to do more computer science stuff

I've felt this way before, but I am beginning to feel this way again, I want to do more computer science stuff and I just never get around to it. MIT OpenCourseWare has a crapload of information I could gain something from, but I just never quite get around to it. I also have a couple of unfinished projects I should really work on. First off, a wishlist managing php script. Its something I would like to have working, but at the same time just haven't gotten around to making at all secure. Second, a palm game I wrote based on a windows game, called Tesserae (Originally called sliding windows, a dos application). And thirdly, a website allowing hardware comparisons speicifically dealing with wireless hardware initially. I want to do all of this, and instead, I've done very little of it.

I need some new tshirts

I realized the other day that I needed some new tshirts because some of them I got when I was in 9th grade (which was, ummm, 1996. Yeah, I should buy some new clothes.

Not sure if I am going to purchase any of them, I just found them interesting. Lemme know what you think of any of them.

Tabbed IM in trillian is way easy

I just was thinking about it because a few friends of mine swear by tabbed IM with DeadAIM, I was wondering if I could do the same thing with trillian. Yeah, I can. And it is easy. All you need to do is this:

Go to the Trillian Preferences, then General->Windows->Initial and then select message windows from the drop down box in the "Size, Location and container" section. Check "initial container" and then and type in the name you want for the container. Tada!

Bush is an asshole

Bush is an asshole.

Coldplay in M?en (Munich)

While I was in M?en, on November 11, 2002, I saw Coldplay. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Now I'd like to find someone who has the show, but I just fucking hate the whole tape trading scene. I just want to send blanks and postage and get the show, or trade shns/flaks over the internet. Of course none of that will ever happen. I'll probably never hear the show again.

I'm excited about taking german y next semester

I've been recently thinking about it, and I really want to learn more german. In fact, I would like to learn many different languages, but I'll start with german. I found myself thinking in german tonight and it's kind of funny how language is such a key part of the way that I think, but at the same time it is apparently not tied as closely to english as I would have thought. I remember while I was in germany, the first week I was there, I wasn't sure I was going to adapt to german fast enough and really be able to get by day to day because I just couldn't think in german and ended up doing so much translation in my head. I was just walking by myself one night thinking about god knows what when I suddenly realized I was doing math in my head, but using german numbers. That's where it started for me.

I love amazon.

People bitch about amazon tracking everything you do and privacy invasions (I'm often one of the first people to get upset by this) blah blah blah. But I like amazon. I accidentially closed an IE window containing a book at amazon that took me quite a while to find. Rather than fishing through my history of the 40 amazon product pages i had viewed, I instead went back to amazon's site, and they had a nice little thing that had the last few searches I had done and the last few items I had viewed. Wow, there it was. Another sale to amazon.

I saw the best web ad today

While browsing the web today, I saw an interesting ad. It said "We are the leader in little black check marks." (Think of a feature comparison chart.) A little geeky, but still caught my attention.

Movie distribution over the internet

Recently I've been hearing from a few sources projections about how Movie distribution will work over the internet. Slashdot and OS Opinions have been running stories about the future of movie distribution. Forrester Research even gets in on the fun.

Everyone is saying that media on demand through cable or DirectTV will take off. I'm not questioning that, but I think probably what you will see is downloadable movies that you can burn for yourself onto a DVD-R. Apple should totally do that. It'd be fucking awesome if they did that. But of course, instead they will sell their media hub idea rather than actually doing what makes sense.

I saw Margaret Cho tonight at UNCG

I saw Margaret Cho tonight at UNCG. It was pretty good. She was really funny, but the timing of her delivery of some things lacked a little -- it seemed unpolished and drag things out a little too long, it's not like with every word the audience was roaring in laughter -- overall quite good. Sometimes she dropped into "preach" mode and began telling everyone in the audience exactly what they wanted to hear (the show was put on by UNCG pride, what do you expect) and that was ok, but it got a little old sometimes. Oh, Guilford picked up part of the tab on the tickets, so instead of paying $10 as every UNCG student did, we only paid $2. Cool, eh? Margaret Cho for $2.

50 Cent has an ipod, why can't I.

I was watching BET this morning for a few minutes and a remix of P.I.M.P. came on (the G Mix with Snoop Dogg) and I noticed something. 50 cent has an ipod. He can have the fly bitches, but I want the ipod. Watch it for yourself (Windows Media, RealMedia and QuickTime available)

I don't wanna fly momy

I've never slept in class, but ....

I've only actually slept in class I think twice in my life, but I certainly have taken a nap when I should have been in class.

Mmmm....Cleavage

I'm watching a documentary on cleavage. God bless the History Channel. Oh yeah, and god bless boobs too.

I'm finally figuring out how to get my work done

I'm realizing that this semester, I need to really work hard, like almost every day just to keep up. I've made a list of what I have to get done and spent a number of hours working on it and now I am behind in only one class. Now I just need to chip away a little of the missed reading every day that I don't have new reading for that class and I will be caught up in no time. But still, I'm going to need to work hard. I also figured out exactly how I am going to graduate. In the spring I will take Econometrics, Globalization and It's Discontents, a Computing independant study (website deisgn/implementation), probably German and some other 1 credit course.

Funny ass cartoon - Martin Luther King, I had a Dream

I saw this on insomniac. Funny as hell. Too bad the Miami Herald caved to people bitching about it.

So busy I can't get anything done.

I'm so busy that no matter what I do, nothing ever gets finished. No matter how hard I work tonight/tommmorow/wednesday/thursday I won't get all my work done. Things just need to be sacrificed. And not just things like my social life. For tommorow, here's what I need to do:

Read 3 Articles (30pp each) and write a one page summary and a half page discussion about them.
Read 50 pages in my Econ textbook and right the same 1 and half page response
Read a chapter (~20 pages) of my Artificial Intelligence Textbook
Complete an assignment for my artificial intelligence course
Memorize a map of old europe including countries and capitals for a quiz tommorow
Read a chapter (~40 pages) in my history textbook and write a paragraph answer to a question about it

Other things I should have done allready:

Read another 2 chapter in my econ textbook and write the required page and a half response
Read another article and respond to one I've allready read (1.5 page response each)

I guess that's it. Another thing adding to this frustration is not only did I not get very much sleep last night (4hrs) but that the presentation I worked on for my other econ class (economic geography of peru) didn't actually happen. My professor spoke too long, so instead of 12-15 presentations today, there were 3. And All the prep work I did. Worth nothing. Oh, and I've only been here for a week and a day.

Back from a long break

The webserver that hosts my blog as well as a couple other small sites has been down for quite a few days. It went down as a result of a power outage that messed up the ethernet card. Big ups to my brother for getting it up and running again. Good learning experience for him.

I left beer in the cafe

Tonight, I happened to be in the odd situation of having a six pack of beer (in a paper bag) when I went in the cafe tonight. Me being the idiot I am, I left the bag in there when I left. An hour later, I was taking a shit and suddenly I screamed "fuck! I forgot the beer!" So I went back to the cafe. Still sitting there, next to the table, untouched. Score.

Gonna blog a bunch of old stuff tommorow

I haven't had any entries in a while, because I didn't have my laptop, my internet connection was tweaked and I moved back to school. I'll post a bunch more entries tommorow when I get the chance.

Kicking down doors isn't just for cops

My school wanted to charge me $100 to let me into my room two days early. Well, I didn't want to pay that, so I just kicked my door in. Hehe, it was fun.

Search terms that people use to get to my blog

People end up at my blog searching for interesting things. Here is an excerpt of what the searched for, which search engine they used, and which entry it linked to. (This is only the ones I found interesting, there were many others)

miss my kitty, Google Result #2, I miss my kitty so much (Entry 187)
textarea replacement, Google Result #5, HTMLarea is a dope replacement for a textarea (Entry 135)
kospire channel movies, Google Result #1, I think I wan to start a konspire channel (Entry 161)
coldplay "without parachutes", Google Result #7, Coldplay is cool (Entry 48)
Windows XP Sucks, Yahoo Result #12, Windows XP sucks balls (Entry 145)
cheap technical books, Yahoo Result #3, Cool place to get cheap technical books (Entry 128)
thumb print scanner, Yahoo Result #3, FingerPrint reader on a PC card for my laptop (Entry 173)
legalized pot, Yahoo Result #5, Legalized Pot with Orange joints (Entry 132)
ignition duke video, Yahoo Result #1, Ignition video (Entry 196)
"White Chocolate Reeses", Yahoo Result #2, New reese flavors! (Entry 136)

Of course, as anyone following my blog has seen, searching for annoying webpage, result #8 brings you to Most annoying webpage ever. (Entry 116). Maybe I should close comments on that, they are getting a little out of control.

28 Days later is an awesome movie

I watched 28 days later tonight. It was a really good movie. I haven't seen a film that i enjoyed like that in a quite a while. Although I just watched a dvd rip of it, I really want to go out and watch it in the theatre cause there is an alternate ending. Jeez. Maybe I should drop the five bucks. Yeah, I think I will do that.

When I get a house, I want a bar...and upside down pourers

I've decided that at some point in my life, I need to have a bar. I'm not sure if I would need to own, maintain and run a real bar, like somewhere people came to buy drinks or whether I would happy enough with a bar like in the basement of my house. But there are a number of reasons I need to do this.

Excuse to keep 5 different types of single malted scotch in the house
Chicks dig guys with extensive liquer cabinets
I would have an exuse to buy this

The last item being the most important one of the list, although I have considered giving up everything else in my life to pick up a scotch habbit...mmm...scotch...anyways...back on track. But that product is something that allows you to have bottles of alcohol (hard liquor) upside down with a perfectly measured shot available at a moments noticed. I first saw them at this bar in Munich (the one where I got my first Vodka Shark) and I thought they were super nifty. And such, I want them. So the single bottle version "with clamp" (does that mean it attaches to like the edge of a counter or what) goes for $45+shipping (that's the price from Kittredge, a kitchen supply place in springfield. Although I would much prefer the 6 bottle wall mount version, although $300 seems like a little much for me invest in anything right now. In case you were wondering, the upside down pourers are made by Co-Rect Products. Now since I can get this, if only I could find Shark energy drink somewhere...

Papasan Chairs $99 at Pier 1

I'm excited. I am going to buy a Papasan chair for $99! Pier1 has then on sale and I want one. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to pay for it, but I'm sure I will figure that out one of these days. But I'm so excited. I'm going to order it over the phone (because their website sucks, bad...like I never even found the chair itself on their website) and either pick it up at the greensboro store or have it delivered (I guy working at the store said they had free delivery) to guilford. I'm getting the grey cord one, looks like it would 'accept' stains better. I wouldn't want the chair to look nasty if someone spilled a beer on it.

Do you ever feel like something is missing in your life

Do you ever feel like something is missing? Like you're 80% happy, but somehow you know that you could go after that 20%? That's where I'm at. Tonight I was looking for something, I was hungry. Not metaphorically, but really. But I didn't want something sweet, or something salty. Nor fatty or healthy. I finally realized I wanted a beer. I haven't drank much this summer and so somehow I missed this urge. I wanted a rich, creamy beautiful irish stout. All we had was Sam Adams summer brew. That was like 1-2% of the missing. I think a guinness would have been like 3%. But now I'm back here wondering what's missing. And that makes me realize, it isn't just one thing or even two. I need a whole shift in attitude and state of mind.

I just wasted the last four hours of my life installing postgresql

Note: This entry is quite geeky. Not for the faint of heart.

The server that serves up this blog, amy's blog, my brothers forum and a couple other random websites is a PentiumPro 200 running Debian Linux (Sid). The three software packages power these sites (Nucleus, MovableType and phpBB respectively) all are based on Apache + (PHP or Perl) + MySQL. I am reasonably comfortable with most aspect of all three of these packages, the two supporting languages, apache and mysql. The next website I am going to build, I wanted to do right, from the beginning. And so I decided that I would use Apache + PHP + PostgreSQL. There are many reasons to choose something other than mysql, and postgreSQL is the only one of those other solutions that is both mature and free. So here comes the story..

I had postgres installed on snowball (the linux box) and it was working ok, but I had somehow messed it up a little bit and decided to uninstall and reinstall just so I could get a fresh start without any old mess in the way. Being that I run debian, this was pretty easy with a simple pair of 'apt-get remove postgresql' 'apt-get install postgresql' commands. Of course, the second one didn't work. I kept getting fucking "subprocess pre-installation script

returned error exit status 20" errors. So I filed a bug report about it. So 20 days later (today) I was chatting with a friend about it and got the motivation to give it a try. A few things got my way...what compression format does the deb package format use...tar, gz, bzip2? No. AR. So I thought, oh, the preinstall script is failing, maybe if I can get that to run without errors then the dpkg -i will work. Wrong. 4hrs of work later, as a last resort effort I extracted all the files of the archive to where they would if the software was actually installed and then run apt-get install postgresql. It worked. I love apt so much that I would never give it up for another linux distribution, but sometimes, I just want to scream. So now everything is happy again. Yay linux.

Kazaa Lite and K-Lite block RIAA

Everyone has been hearing about how the RIAA is going after individual Kazaa users with lawsuits about their infringing music. Apparently a couple of folks have realeased software to protect you a little bit from lawsuits. The new versions of Kazaa Lite and K-Lite block the RIAA's IP-ranges from connecting to kazaa. It probably won't help much, but it certainly couldn't hurt. Its too bad I don't have a nice firewall setup now, but I might want to consider blocking all these ranges. (It's not just the RIAA and related, it's also FBI, DOJ, Sony Music, etc) There are a some mirrors for the list (suitable for any software) and windows software PeerGaurdian is available too. I haven't used either of these, I just thought it was interesting.

It's not quite 240 dollars worth of pudding, but almost

I was complaining to my mom about how Skippy peanut butter (my favorite brand) was expensive and only available in small jars in North Carolina. So she happened to be going to Costco (wholesale club) and called to ask me whether I liked Chunky or Smooth better (Chunky) because they had two-packs of 40oz jars for $6. (Which is cheap). So when she got home, I was quite suprised to see that she came home she had four two-packs. Yes. That's 320 ounces (20lbs!) of peanut butter. I like peanut butter, but what the fuck am I going to do with twenty pounds of peanut butter? I don't know.

New brainsoup functionality

I stayed up late last night working on brainsoup. One thing has been fixed and one new feature added. First off, the url generation bug for following the archive to multiple depths (long urls that don't make sense) is fixed. Secondly, I now allow account creation. For the time being, I still am allowing anonymous posting, but I will probably turn that off sometime soon. But anyways, for those of you who ever comment on my blog, you might want to go ahead and create an account. Oh and another thing, I am working on the HTML in comments thing. I have a solution and am testing it right now.

Stealing internet access is fun

It's fun to drive around with my laptop and wireless and steal internet access. Even right now I am using someone else's connection to the internet to post this entry. I really need to get FreeBSD installed and a card with an external antenna.

Holy crap, Glider Pro for free.

Anyone else remember the super cool video game for macintosh Glider? In the game you were a paper airplane that floated through a house dodging all sorts of obstacles. Well, the company that had distributed it (Casady & Greene Inc) went bankrupt and the original developer has released it FOR FREE. (The newest MacOSX and MacOS9 versions as well as old 68k black and white versions.) Awesome. Oh and for all of you lonely PC users, there is a windows version too. I used to play this game at my aunts house on her mac and loved it. It's really cool.

Rolling rocks up the pyramids

Wondering how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Maybe they rolled the rocks up. Dope.

My laptop got broke, but it's going to get fixed

While I was using my laptop today, it was just sitting on my leg while I was sitting on a chair, the plastic casing broke. The weight of the display now pulls the screen away from the rest of the laptop and a not nice way. It's not pretty. But...I called IBM and it is covered under warrantee and they will fix it. Yay! Too bad the box won't be here until monday, i won't get the laptop out until tuesday, they won't get it till wednesday/thursday. I can't imagine they will actually get it out the same day and so it won't get here until next monday. A week without my laptop. How is that going to work?

I spent the day working hard programming

I got up nice and early today (10am - hey, it's early for me) and worked all day programming at the Amherst College Library until it closed (4pm) and then I moved over to our public library, the Jones Library till they closed (8:30pm). I really got back into the swing of things. Maybe I will actually release some form of my application before going back to school. Or maybe not.

Amy has a blog

For all of you that may not have known, amy has her own blog. She's running off the same server I am (PentiumPro 200 running Debian Linux attached to my cable modem) and using MovableType. After setting up her blog with it, I like it a lot. There are some parts that are different than Nucleus (for better and for worse) but one overwhelming reason I like it better is that it actually handles multiple blogs properly (Nucleus doesn't do a very good job of this). I'll let amy use it for a month or so before I decide whether to switch to it. It also wouldn't be that much work (I don't think) to migrate all my past entries to it.

So check out Amy's blog Crazy Cook.

Bush and Blair - Endless Love

Apparently this is really old, but it's still funny and I hadn't seen it until yesterday... George Bush and Tony Blair collaborate for the Lionel Richie classic endless love. Also mirrored locally in Quicktime.

Michael got off

Michael went to court yesterday. He got off. No speeding ticket, no driving without a license. Only $100 in court fees and $300 for the lawyer. He should have burned for that.

New smilie 8!

Someone used a smilie today on IM that I had never seen before. He said " brb 8! ". Be Right Back, smoking. Jeezums.

Dogs, cats on meagre menu as Liberians go hungry

Dogs, cats on meagre menu as Liberians go hungry

That's a fucking terrible headline. Read the article for yourself.

Key West on NPR

I was driving in my car the other day and heard some stuff about key west street musicians on all things considered. I like the key west street performers, you can either Listen to or read about it.

I got home safely without getting a speeding ticket

I got home without getting a ticket. Yeah!

Too bad I found out that my brother got arrested last night.

He's got a thread on his forums page.

Goin back to amherst

I'm goin back to amherst, yes I am.

I'm goin back to amherst, yes I am.

I'm goin back to amherst, I'm goin back to amherst

Yes I am going amherst, yes I am.

(Sung to the tune of "she'll be comin round the mountain")

20ft x 5ft for the 5ft x 5ft price

I got a storage unit that is really way to big for me. 100sq feet. Yeah, it's too big. Only $35/mo + $10 admin fee. So I have tons of space, and nothing to put in it. Geeez. It's only for a month though. Even really just for the 3 weeks until school starts again.

Online Sweepstakes and contests

I found a site with online contests. I've wasted a lot of time there. This is the sort of thing that makes we want to write a computer program to automatically enter myself in these contests. I want free stuff!!!

Free printing at Duke and Elon

Oh, I forgot to add this to the last entry, in case you were ever wondering. Printing at Duke and Elon is free for all in the libraries. Also at Elon, there are many many places you can use your laptop (carrolls with ethernet) for free. So if you are ever in the greensboro area and need free internet, go to Elon. Something else of note about Elon, my roommate and I were bitching how our library closes very early during the summer (9pm Sun-Thurs, 5pm Fri/Sat) and how much nicer Elon's setup was (11pm most nights). Even though it is not particularly practical, we would both like the idea of having a library available 24/7. But anyways, the reason that Elon's library is open later than ours is because their computer labs and computer helpdesk are also there. Both of us hadn't really thought about how we have a building that is open 24/365 with two labs of computers in them. Too bad we have printing quotas. Oh, and don't even try to use wireless at Guilford or Duke if you aren't a student there. You need to authorize you MAC address with both before using wireless.

I went to duke yesterday, it's big

I had some research to do yesterday, so after realizing that my school doesn't have a library worth shit, I decided to travel to a real university. I went to Duke specifically because they have archives of the London Times back to its first issue. To make a long story short, I got the article I needed, but not until after I had to park half a mile away from the library, got lost in Duke Medical center and waster 45minutes of my time. Actually it worked out pretty well, I got a little tour of Duke and got my work done. I then decided I should find books on my subject (which I had not done as of yet because the London Times thing was enough to get me to go anyways) and soon realized that all 7 books I was interested in were at the Lilly Library not the main Perkins Library where I was sitting using the computer. I soon figured out that they were on different campuses and I needed to drive over to East campus. Fun. So I ended up driving over there and finally finding the books that I needed. After that library closed (7pm) I began the drive back to greensboro, but (as planned) stopped off at Elon to see their collection. I actually found my best sources at the Elon Library. Although I didn't get a chance to view the DVD I had hope to view, I did find an interview with Alfred Hitchcock where he spoke at length about the film that I am doing my report on. (Strangers on a Train) Have the director/producer's view on the film might help my paper a little. All in all a very productive day.

Ignition video

Michael gave me a copy of a funny ass home made video. Its for the R Kelly song Ignition. It's only 35mb or so, so you should watch it.

The best butt ever

Yum!

Tivo for radio

At $50, the Griffen Technology RadioSHARK is a really cool product. It lets you do Tivo like timeshifting and recording onto a harddrive, but instead of doing it for TV, it does it with radio. I know it works for Macs, I wonder if this software is available for PC. Combine this with the fact that when you buy a mac laptop (either iBook or PowerBook) you not only get the educational discount (10%-15%) off the laptop, but if you buy an ipod ($300 - 10% = $270) you get $200 off. So you get an iPod for $70. Cool! Get this radioTivo, a 15" powerbook and an iPod...anyone want to give me a graduation present a little early?

You don't have permission to link to earthlink

Can this sort of thing be legal?

Taken from earthlink's terms of service....

You may provide a hypertext link to our Web site on another Web site, provided that: (a) the link must be clearly marked "EarthLink", (b) the link must "point" to the URL "http://www.earthlink.com" or "www.earthlink.net" and not to any other pages within the Web site, (c) the appearance, position and other aspects of the link may not be such as to damage or dilute the goodwill associated with our name and trademark(s), (d) the appearance, position and other aspects of the link may not create the false appearance that an entity is associated with or sponsored by EarthLink, (e) the link, when activated by a user, must display this Web site full-screen and not within a ?frame? on the linked Web site, and (f) EarthLink may, in its sole discretion, revoke consent to link to our website at any time. All other hypertext links to the Web site must be approved in writing by EarthLink.

What sort of authority do they have to say I can't link to them in frames? Cause you know how much I love frames. Oh, fuck earthink!

Be careful of 802.11a channel 157

I setup a friends home network with 802.11a and 802.11b. 802.11a running for everyones normal usage and 802.11b for visitors and the G5 they might get. I only reaosn I didn't do 802.11a/802.11g is cause there wasn't a 802.11g AP that also have the second generation Atheros 802.11a chipset. I figure 802.11a won't be changing much in the next year or two, but 802.11g will be. But anyways, when I initially set it up, I remember that the higher channels allowed you to use higher power so I just chose the highest one available to me. Channel 157. Take a look at a table that cisco created with info about both 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels. As I found out, I was breaking the law by using channel 157. (Oops!) This led to a combination of two things, first off, it operated at a lower power than channels 52, 54, 60 or 64 (160mW vs. 800mW) and secondly, I believe there was something actually using that range that I wasn't licensed to use. I remember a friend of mine who worked for worldcom selling wireless broadband in the spectrum range of 5.4ghz or so. Maybe it was higher up too. Every once in a while it would not be able to get ANY signal, even at very close ranges. So I changed the channel to 52 and everything is peachy keen.

Pinochle is fun

In the last few days I've been playing lots of Pinochle. Last night I stayed up till 4am playing. I like playing cards, I need to do that more often.

My resume is better faster stronger

I updated my resume. It's better now. Let me know what you think. I did some cool stuff with CSS that makes some of it disapear when you print it (stuff at the top). Thanks to Gabe for the basic CSS.

WarDriving

I had my first war-driving experience the other day. (For those of you wondering, wardriving is driving around in your car with a laptop looking for homes/offices that have wireless access points radiating out into the streets)Although brief, and not slow enough to do anything, it was definately interesting. I got myself a super nifty Netgear WAG511 wireless card. (802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g). It is really nice. I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a wireless card to use -ANYWHERE-. But anyways, I stumbled across a few access points (like 10 or so) in less than a mile of driving in a rich neighborhood. Crazy eh? I'm going to go ahead and install FreeBSD because there is only one real free application to manage this sort of thing for windows (NetStumbler) and it doesn't support my wireless card. Even in Windows XP. In combination with this, the next toy I would also like to get my hands on is a GPS so that I can record the locations of the treasure that I happen to find while out driving. I've been looking at a few different ones but a Garmin eTrex is pretty reasonable at a little over a hundred dollars. It would also let me do driving directions as I go along. Super cool.

I'm poor, I need to make some money

I currently have no job. My money is disapearing quickly. I'll have a little work at Tapestry when I get home, but I'm not sure how many hours they will be able to give me. I'm also making a little bit of money from Amazon Associates ($35 since 7/1/03). I'm thinking about what sort of revenue models would work for my wireless card comparion site. In addition to associate revenue links, I could also put up some ads with Google AdSense. Little text ads on the side of the page that would probably pay me a little bit of money too. The problem with all of these genius internet money making schemes is that the payoff takes too long. Amazon pays quarterly, (I don't get a dime until September 1st!) and google only pays once you've generated $100. (Probably take 3 months or more). Maybe I should get a real job.

I miss my kitty so much

It's not fair. I feel like I've been robbed.

This morning, my kitty, India, died

After noticing an absess on her butt that had ruptured spilling blood and puss, we brought India back to the vet. They explained that they needed to surgically remove the infected areas around the wound -- they would do this, and we should pick her up in the morning. At around 1am, they called to tell us she had died.
Continue reading "This morning, my kitty, India, died"

$120 retail for a lasanga baking pan.

I opened my Amazon Goldbox today. They offered me something special. A $90 baking pan. Check it out. It must be a super cool pan for that kind of money.

Traffic info on a handheld

I've been asking for this for years. This is one of the few applications that would make me consider buying a wireless connected handheld. The TrafficGauge. It's only for the Seattle area, but I'm sure other major cities will follow suit in the next few years.

Information should be free, but what if that information being free ends up killing us

I found a link to an interesting article at the Washington Post on slashdot. It's about a guy who is doing his PhD work on how vunerable America's telecommunications infastructure is. Essentially it is a map of the most effective targets to hit with a terrorist attack. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I am a big fan of the academic process, publishing of work followed by public scrutiny, especially as far as public disclosure of software bugs is concerned. The way I have always justified this is giving the software vendor an advance (3-7 days) so they have the oppertunity to release a patch before or simultaneously with the public vunerability report, but how well does that scale. What if the re-engineering of the product will take weeks to fix the bug (a major bug from MS for example), companies (in general) don't have a good track record of fixing things quickly unless there is some public pressure. But what about the power grid. That's the sort of thing that could take months, or even years to reengineer properly so that it wasn't as vunerable. But if we don't make those things public will the people in charge ever feel that it is a big enough issue to actually take care of? Or would they just let it go on broken, like now. Hm.

People buy funny stuff

I submitted a story to Slashdot and it got accepted. Since I had not given a product link to amazon in the story itself (I thought it might not get accepted) I needed a way to make money off this. Recently, I've been making a little bit of money from Amazon Associates (they give me 5% on just about everything).After I saw the submission was accepted I crafted a comment and waited until the story was posted and tried ot post it quickly. The comment was the third one posted, but there were a bunch of responses to the first couple so it is a ways down the page.

So people understand this, when you link to Amazon, you get a comission on anything that a user adds to their shopping cart in the next 24hrs, not just the item you linked to. One of my first commisions was someone buying Jesus Christ Superstar - Broadway (DVD) which I thought was really funny. But things have gotten even more amusing. A couple people bought some wireless gear (a few hundred dollars worth) and someone bought the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book. Hey, it's only 30cents, but if you want to hand me a dime and a nickel, I'll open my hand. But here are three other books someone ordered: (I assume they are all the same person)

Yum!

Todd is in munich

I just finished chatting with my friend Todd who in currently in Munich. I hate him. I want to be there. Grumble grumble gruble.

Wireless stuff

I've been working something similar to SeattleWireless' Hardware Comparison. It has comparisons of all sorts of 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11a, etc client cards and access points. The list I have been building (while I am unemployed now) has like 10x as many cards with more information that is more consistant (all power ratings in dBm, instead of some in mW some in dBm). Although I haven't gotten that far into it, go ahead and check out a preliminary version of it. I've only gotten to the N section. I've also gotten some of the PHP and SQL stuff written to make this into a nice website and not just an excel spreadsheet.

Funny Trailer Emily showed me the other day

Seeing Emily's comment reminded me. There is a really funny trailer for the movie Jerry Seinfeld Comedian: Where Does Comedy Come From?. Apple has the trailer available for free. Check it out. I haven't laughed out loud when watching a trailer in a while. It is that funny.

Microsoft uses Macintosh products in house

I was looking at the specifications PDF for the

Microsoft Wireless Broadband Adapter MN-520. With the full version of Acrobat (I don't think you get this with the regular version, but I could be wrong) you can see what program created the PDF. Well, Microsoft apparently uses the Macintosh version of Adobe Acrobat Distiller. The greatest part about this is that the MN-520 is Windows only and doesn't (and won't ever) work for the Macintosh. Funny eh?

History of the Microsoft Mouse

Microsoft has a History of the Microsoft Mouse up on their website. It's done in flash and was kind of interesting. Worth taking a quick look at.

More silly pictures for product promotion

I ran into another silly image. It was while reading a PDF that a networking company put out. (I thought it was for a wireless card.) This image was on page one, pages two and three had equal ammounts of silliness. But anyways. Here is the silliness. They sell computer gear.

Nazi Documentary

I watched an interesting documentary about Nazis and Hilter. It was about their view of art. Somewhat interesting. It was called The Architecture of Doom. It was pretty good, but the fact that it was made in 1989 showed through a little. It was pretty clear that they were using slide projection for still picture sections. As a result there was time between pictures that was just black screen. It took away from it a little, but otherwise it was still interesting.

Lifestyle choices

I'm not sure how a wireless phone or wireless lan card could define your lifestyle. But Conceptronic has a couple of interesting images on the front page.

FingerPrint reader on a PC card for my laptop

Dope. Now I can add thumb print access to my laptop.

My kitty is super cool

My kitty is the best kitty ever. Today there was a huge concert here at Guilford. It was for the Eastern Music Festival. EMF is a camp that happens at guilford college every summer bringing young musicians from all up and down the east coast to play together. So there were like 500+ people chilling here in their EMS chairs and tables (yes, people need to bring foldable tables) -- it was a lot like TangleWood, but 100 yards from my dorm room. So Amy and I decided that it would be cool to go out and watch...and why not bring out the kitty on the leash. She was really awesome and let like 20 different kids pet her without spazzing out at all. She rules.

Driving to lynchburg tommorow.

Geez. I'm driving to lynchburg, va tommorow. I'm getting paid $50 to do it. Yum.

LaserDisc and SegaCD auction

I want this. It's a laserdisc player that also plays Sega Genesis and SegaCD games. Someone want to buy me an early graduation present?

I have a kitty now.

Amy found her in the rain outside of her work. She was cold and crying. Her name is India.

Get a wedge-e

I saw a great ad on tv today. It's for the wedgE (pronounced wedge-e). It cuts lemons, limes, oranges, apples, onions, etc into 6 pieces. But their slogan, which they said a few times at the end of the commercial. "Get a wedge-e". Dope.

The Art of Turboing

Have you ever called customer service for something, wait hours on hold and then finally speak to someone who knows less than you do? I have, and I think I have perfected the art of how to talk to people in tech support into getting what I want. If you say what they want to hear, you can get what you want. But anyways, somebody wrote an article called The Art of Turboing. Turboing being accelerating your call up the chain of command past normal support reps. I did this once when I almost lost my domain (duckies.org) because my credit card company (FirstUSA) decided to decline payment on the transaction, without letting me know. ("It was international...the computer flagged it as suspicious") So I got them to get a german-english translator on the phone to call up and explain why it was all their fault. As it turns out, Joker.com was closed, so they ended up dealing with it when I wasn't on the phone. It was just very cool and I liked being a bad-ass...

I want a glow in the dark fish

A Taiwanese company created a glow in the dark fish by implementing genes from Jellyfish and Coral into fish. Cool!

I'm going the Apple WWDC keynote at the apple store in NC

I'm going to go to watch the Apple WWDC Keynote at the Apple store at the SouthPoint mall. I'm such a nerd. But until I get a job, no use in not exploiting the oppertunity.

I quit my job

I quit.

I bought a DC (Car/Airline) adapter for my thinkpad

I bought a car adapter for my thinkpad. I'm excited, now while I'm on long trips I watch DVDs and do work. Oh and when flying...I'm excited...too bad my battery kind of sucks now...

My Ecommerce class is funny

My class is funny. We are "learning" frontpage. It's funny. I don't "need" the class, but I need the credits towards graduation and it counts towards my major. Wow my CMIT major is a joke. Whatever though, 4hours a week for 10 weeks isn't so bad. And this way I get to graduate in the spring. Oh boy is she not organized though. She knows a decent ammount, but she isn't very organized as a teacher. And by a decent ammount I would consider her self a peer as far as knowledge is concerned. In some areas. She has more buisiness/management knowledge, but technicially she blunders a lot like she doesn't have a strong grasp of the material. College is money well spent...right...

I think I wan to start a konspire channel

I read about Konspire today on slashdot. Once i read a little bit about it, I decided its a cool technology. I think I have an idea for what to use it for. Before I let loose the idea, let me summarize what the technology is for those who aren't nery enough to have read about it already.

It works like this. (Simplified, there are plenty of details on their site). You setup a channel. Associated with this channel there are two keys. One key allows you to publish/broadcast content, the other allows you to recieve that content being broadcast. Basically, once you downloaded an installed their software, whenever something was broadcast in the channels you select, you would get a copy of that content. If your computer is off when the broadcast happens, you miss it, just like radio/TV.

So here's the channel I would like to setup...Strong arm all my friends (and their friends if possible) to install this client and the key. Get a decent sized group together, 30-40 people or more. Then give many people, maybe not everyone, but nearly, the ability to broadcast content. Personally, I think the content that would be most interesting are things like songs/albums you recently came across and thought others would be interested in (and they might not hear otherwise). Additionally, other types of content could be broadcast: short videos, creative writing, blog entries, cool photos, etc. The level of traffic would be at most 100mb or so a day (if people even had that much to say!), but most days there would be little or nothing broadcast (0-5mb). Since this content would auto download, the user would have to clean out the stuff they didn't want, but I think it would be an interesting experience.

Alternatively there could be a low-traffic and high traffic channels. The high traffic making sense for users on unlimited, unmonitored connections (cable, dsl, etc) and could additionally include larger files, like entire movies, television episodes or collections of albums.

Recently I feel like I live in cave as far as new music is concerned. I don't hear too much outside of what I catch on the radio for the few minutes while in the car. If I hear new music, I want to share it with my friends, and if they find something they like, I'd like to hear it too. One of the failed peer2peer services (AudioGalaxy maybe?) had something similar to this where you could post links to files that members of your group could download. I don't really remember what it was because I didn't use it that much. It was also kind of annoying because people reposted the same content like every other day (duh!) and also because most of the groups did not restrict who could post, any fuck head could send you files even if they weren't on-topic. (Like broadcasting nirvana on a comedy channel (duh!)).

I'd be interested in setting something like this up, if you would be interested, let me know and I will actually do it. Broadcasts could be scheduled so if there was something big you did want, you could be sure to be online. The #1 feature I would like them to add is moderation of postings. That way, someone could send the file to me (or anyone else with post-access) and then it could be made sure not to be a duplicate and relevant and the scheduled for broadcast. I'm not sure I know enough people to make this work. But I think it could be cool.

Spam has now reached the level of sophistication of memepool 3 years ago

I got a piece of spam. It pretty much stands for itself.

I can crash windows calculator whenever I want

I hate windows.

Check out the Windows XP PowerToys. It has some useful stuff such as tweakui. It also has a graphing calculator. I thought I would check it out. Too bad within 15 seconds I figured out a consistant way to crash it. If you double click on the constants window the program crashes. It's funny.

DNS is broken (everydns)

My free dns provider (Everydns.net) who has been excellent in the past, is fucked now. Someone stole their domain in a wierd way. The human link is always the weakest. You may not be able to get to my site for a day. But if you are reading this, you could. Argh. My brain hurts. It'll be fixed in the 24-48 hours.

I hate my job

I hate my job.
I had an oppertunity to leave here and go home to work for the summer ($20/hr x 40/hrs week x 6 weeks = $4800).
I'm an idiot.

I was promised the oppertunity to do the new Windows build (Windows XP)...not happening.
I was promised the oppertunity to integrate the new XServe in the SAN...my boss did it without me.
I was promised the oppertunity to build a couple server from scratch (Windows 2000 Server)...my boss did it without me.
I was told there would be some inventory work...that's 90% of what I've been doing.

I hate my job.

Maybe I should quit.

802.11a / 802.11b / 802.11g combo cards

I contributed some stuff back to SeattleWireless wiki. Specifically some information about 802.11a/b/g combo cards. Much of their information is good, but recently it has fallen somewhat out of date. Anyways, if you are into that sort of thing, check out the HardwareComparison they have up. Also check out FreeNetworks' ReceiveSensitivity listing. I'll be updating that too when I get a chance.

Internet Explorer Sucks

IE Sucks. Not just cause it doesn't support pngs, and because it's big a bloated. But because for some reason it doesn't work anymore. When I click on links it doesn't do anything. If I cut and paste the link into the address bar, it works, but clicking on links is just broken. So for now, it's mozilla.

Smart people - Water proof sex books

Some smart folks invented a plastic-like thing that can be used for books. And someone else thought that this would allow for erotica in the bathtub (no problems with dropping the book). So now you can now buy Aqua Erotica and Wet: More Aqua Erotica for your personal bath time entertainment. That same editor, Mary Anne Mohanraj, also did a choose your own adventure erotica collection. Genius. Absolutely Genius.

I'm having trouble with sleep again

I'm having some trouble adjusting my schedule this summer for work and classes. I am required to work monday through friday 8:30am to 3:30pm with an hour lunch. This means, that the latest I should be going to bed any night of the week is midnight. This is something that is not very natural for me. At all. I like to stay up late (like now) and just fiddle around. As a result, I have been running into difficulties getting up in the morning. I don't like the idea of getting up early, working most of the day, having a couple hours in the afternoon, then having four hours of class (6pm till 10pm) and then going right off to bed. The worst part of this all, is that I realize a while ago, that my body was best adjusted and woke up on its own when I got 10hours of sleep a night. 10 hours. I just can't get that every night.

I'm interested in gaming

I've never been particularly interested in multiplayer gaming. Partly because I didn't have a computer with a 3D card until less than a year ago, but partly because I'm more of a social individual than that. At least I like to think so. Slashdot.org had a story with a link to a documentary about video gaming. I was facinated by a statistic that any hour of the day, any day of the year there are 20,000 people playing counterstrike. I also found a radio program on the CBC about a mother being concerned for her son playing too many games, and how she observes a LAN party he holds.

GRE Economics

I had never thought about it, but after seeing a test prep book in one of my professors office, I thought I should probably take the GRE in economics. I'm not sure how well I would do, but it would be nice to have some sort of test confirming that I know something about economics. So I went online looking for a prep book and what was involved with taking the actual test. After I didn't find to many books out there, I decided I would check out the ETS site. Apparently, they do not offer an Economics subject test anymore. One less thing I have to do I guess. But maybe I should take the general GRE...

Road Trip to a National Forrest outside of Asheville

This weekend I decided I needed to get the hell out of Greensboro and so I took a little road trip out to Pisgah National Forrest outside of Asheville. It was really nice. We stayed at one of the campgrounds in the actual forrest, and it was pretty cheap ($18). Amy and I just brought along a tent and sleeping bags and chilled. It was really nice. I wish I still had my sleeping bag (I lent it to someone and then they dropped out of school without returning it). We did a little walking and drove around on some of the little dirt trail roads out into the middle of nowhere. Beautiful place. Oh and we checked out Looking Glass Falls.

I was excited about the possibility of swimming at Sliding Rock, but it turned out it was kind of lame. I was expecting something a little more dramatic, but what you can you do. I was hoping for something more like the natural water slide in New Hampshire (Don't remember which one) I used to go while at camp. That was a real slide, 10 foot drop into a 8 foot deep pool. Good stuff. But this weekend it wasn't hot enough to justify swimming anyways -- that's part of the reason we went to the mountains, cool breezes...

I get to do wireless in someone else's house...it should be fun

I get to play with toys and not pay for it.

Charlie Chaplin

I'm taking a course this semester in classical american cinema, and we are starting out with Charlie Chaplin and other silent films. Once a week we watch a movie in a class and then I'm supposed to watch a film similar to that and write a response. So I tried to go to blockbuster and get a charlie chaplin movie. Let's just say, the guy looked at me kind of funny and was like, "we have only match, a movie called Chaplin...is that what you were looking for?" Um. No. The guy didn't even know who Charlie Chaplin was. Although Hollywood Video is silly (no member network--you have to sign up for a new card at each different store and get a new physical card too...grrr....) they actually have a classics section. With a few charlie chaplin movies even, including the one I rented City Lights. Maybe I'll watch it tommorow, cause it's a little late to start the movie tonight.

Palm toys aren't fun anymore

The item I bought from ebay sounds awesome and would perfectly suit me. But it won't work with my laptop. It requires a Thinkpad T23, I have a Thinkpad T21. Life sucks. And I'm out twenty bucks. And I never even got the chance to plug it in before I got disapointed. Anyone have a Palm Mxxx (M500, M505, M515, M125, IBM C500, etc) and a newer thinkpad than me? It's yours. I'll give it to for next to nothing. Just make sure you have an Ultrabay Plus not just an Ultrabay 2000.

New palm toys

I have been having some trouble syncing my palm m500 recently. A friend of mine thought it might be the cradle static problem (I have an updated cradle, which fixes that) or the Green Light Crash (my palm isn't crashing). But anyways, when I went to germany, I assumed that I would be able to buy a cradle or transformer so I could charge having gone to germany and buy a Travel Charger (29.95 USD), but instead I ended up buying the the same thing but for 60 Euros. It's funny, because the cable I needed for my thinkpad only cost 3 euro. But anyways, I bought a new toy today, a cradle that goes into the ulrabay of my thinkpad on ebay. This way I don't need anything external anywhere I go, I just slide in this bay and charge/sync. It seems kind of rare (I've never actually seen on ebay before now) and I couldn' turn it down for under twenty bucks. Now I just need to pick up a burner that goes in the same bay.

Windows XP sucks balls

I've finally come to the conclusion that Windows XP is slow as hell. I'm going to go back to windows 2000 professional. Maybe I will start using Linux more too. Jeez, I hate having to go through this again.

Hartman Value Profiles...A Personality Inventory for Good and Evil

The Hartman Value Profile. Scientific principles applied a personality inventory. Dealing with good an evil. Take the test for yourself. It's interesting.

The puppy channel

Although it never actually came into being in a proper form, The Puppy Channel was a great idea. Rather than watching the crap that is on television day to day, I would like to watch cute little puppies all day long. Apparently it didn't get the venture capital it needed, too bad. Apparently at one time (Summer, 1998) the puppy channel at one time aired in Northampton, MA. I think it may of aired on the Mediaone channel, which we got in Amherst too. I never knew about it, but I think it would have been cool to watch. Puppies are so cute but ...

Emotional Constipation

I heard an interesting term today. Emotional Constipation...I think that is what might cause the depression that I have sometimes. It's not because some individual event depresses me, or I don't cry often enough, it's because everything just bottles up too much. Some times I just try to move on without letting it go, sometimes I try to address all of them, but usually I just address enough of them to move on. But sometimes you are just emotionally constipated and can't let enough of it go.

I think blogging may help that, but maybe it doesn't. Don't know. I haven't done it long enough to tell.

Alone time

I underestimate the value of time just chilling by yourself. Having no roommate is really cool. I just need to remember that I love being alone and doing whatever just happens. I've spent the last few hours not watching tv, but listening to a radio show and browsing the web a little. Taking care of some of the things I've wanted to do and just haven't had the chance, but mostly just relaxing a bunch.

11 Years 9 Months, and 5 Days, Burger Store Episodes and Frustrations

11 Years 9 Months, and 5 Days, Burger Store Episodes and Frustrations. This guy worked for minimum wage, less than $6/hr. At a burger joint. Oi. And then he wrote a book about it. Listen to an excerpt in act three of episode 236 of this american life.

More Moxy Fr?s...

While listening to an episode from march of This American Life (a nifty show on NPR) and after act four they play a Moxy Fr?s tune. It's a song written in 1991, called the Gulf War Song. Don't happen to own Bargainville, download the song (3.6MB MP3). And once you realize that the song is awesome, buy the album.

I started playing with my N64 again

I had forgotten how cool the n64 is. Especially for when it was released. Essentially (as far as I know) it was the last console system to use a cartridge, but for this reason has an advantage over playstation and dreamcast games of the same sort. No wait times. Ever. It's dope. On every game, even like simple ass games, there is a 5 to 10 second loading time before you get to play. None of that here. Just instant gratification all around. It's even worse with newer games too, like GTA3: Vice City, which is definately one of my favorite games, has like an initial 20second load time, then followed by another 30-40 second load time and then another 10 seconds whenever you move between islands. It kind sucks like that. If you want to have levels that are that complex I guess you need to do some sort of pre-loading. I just wish that the system could anticipate this need (like if I am driving on a bridge to another part of the city) it should use any spare processing power and memory towards loading that next level. Who knows, maybe it allready does do that, but I just get tired of waiting for that game.h

New reese flavors!

While waiting for a perscription to be filled today I saw (and bought) something new and exciting.

White Chocolate reeses. It was different, mostly the peanut butter over powered the white chocolate, but that's not all bad because the peanut butter is SOOOO good... I'm just waiting for the inside out cups (September) and the Honey Roasted cups (August). Yum peanut butter is good.

HTMLarea is a dope replacement for a textarea

Gabe pointed it out a while ago, but HTMLArea is awesome. We are starting to use it here at work and I like it a whole bunch. Just drop it in place of any html textarea and BANG! WYSIWYG text editing.

I hate grunt work

I'm getting really tired of my new job. And it is only day 3. I'm working for the school this summer and I was excited at the possibility of creating the new build for the computers (including OSX) and hopefully doing some work building servers, but for now I'm just doing shit work. Yay. Inventory. I've decided that I'm just not going to care. I have to be here for the summer (I need the credits) and so I need to work. (I need the money). I'm going to come in when they want, (8:30), take my mandated 1 hour lunch (who they fuck needs a whole hour!) and then leave at 3:30. No working late. No taking initiative. I'm just doing what I'm told. I have the rest of my life to actually care about what I do. It's all because I have a controlling, manipulative, asshole boss. The best part about this whole deal is that I didn't actually apply for the position that I ended up getting, I am working with him because he doesn't like to work with women. So tommorow, I will continue my inventory, eat my hour long lunch, and do whatever work I am told to do.

Spray paint for plastic

I saw an ad today for a cool product, Krylon Fusion spray paint. Supposedly it bonds to plastic really well, and they even have glossy colors. I'll have to try it myself, but it there are quite a few things that I have that need their colors "adjusted".

Legalized Pot with Orange joints

I thought of a problem (and then a solution) the other day. If pot were legalized how would someone (police) tell the difference a marijuana cigarette and a tobacco one. The reason I would be concerned is that for the same reason I am against drunk driving, I am also against smoking pot and driving. It is pretty easy (not fool proof) to identify a beer can or a wine bottle from 100ft away and it is very easy to tell the difference at 10ft. With a marijuana cigarette this would not be true. You would have no way to tell. Unless they were orange. Yep. Legalize pot, but make all pre-wrapped cigarettes orange. Yes you could still roll-your-own, or smoke out of something else, but this would address a very real problem that few people are thinking about now. With cigarettes, i would guess less than 2% of all tobacco is rolled by hand and it is pretty easy to tell when someone is smoking out of a bong that it is probably not tobacco. This should really only be focused at smoking while driving (high driving). Just a thought I had while driving down.

I want more moxy fruvous

One of my favorite bands Moxy Fruvous is currently on "haitus". It sucks. I want to see them again. But I guess in the interim I can make do with the songs that made for each concert-goers who went to more than 18 shows in a year. (41 songs in all in all) Here are all some of those songs in MP3.

Cafepress is a really cool company

CafePress is a cool company that does on-demand mechandise. I've seen a bunch of websites that have stores there, but after looking into it, I think it is one of the coolest ideas in a while. It's very simple. You send them artwork, you select which items you want to "sell", you select how much markup you want above the cafepress base price and you sell. Every item is made as it is sold so there is no inventory. That takes the whole Just-In-Time supply-chain management that Toyota pioneer to a whole new level.

The apple trailers site is funny

I was stumbling through the Apple trailers site and in the Miramax section they had a trailer for A Hard Days Night. When they list the headlining actors they just say "John Paul George Ringo"...every other movie has last names. I never knew the Beatles were that big.

Cool place to get cheap technical books

My brother pointed me to a nifty store that has technical books for cheaper than Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It's called BookPool. I'm not really sure how it compares to the prices that isbn.nu indexes. (Cause isbn.nu seems to be broken -- normally they index amazon/bn and like a dozen other sites.) Just a cool site fot technical books anyways.

Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde

I saw an ad on TV for a modeling angency saying their models had been in many movies including Legally Blonde 2. I had no idea it existed. Apparently it does, and the official title is Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde. You should check out the trailer. Words cannot express my amusement.

Trillian is a great IM client

For those of you out there running windows, I would highly recommend using Trillian as your IM client. It lets you use AIM, ICQ, MSN andY! all within the same program. It also gives you a message history and some other nifty features. One of which is that whenever someone type LOL it makes a cute giggling noise. If you don't actually want to give up AIM all together, you can just run DeadAIM

> as an addon and get rid of the ads in AIM and it gives you message history too. It also gives you transparency and tabbed IM windows, but although I don't like either of those many people swear by them. But seriously folks, next time you IM me, type LOL in a message and my computer will giggle at me.

Lotus Notes on the go

Ever since I started going to college at Guilford and had exposure to Lotus Notes I wanted to get my mail to sync to my palm. I tried a few programs: EasySync (which later became EasySync Pro), Intellisync and Pylon. None of them were free and mostly they sucked. Of course this was two years ago, but I am a bitter person in general and have no ability to forgive... But anyways, there is a picture that made me remember all of this trouble I went through.

Too bad although NotesSync is a real application, that screen shot is just the Lotus Notes splash screen rotated photoshopped in.

Wireless fun stuff

I have a subscription to the magazine Wired. They are a little too tech-like sometimes, but hey, they have interesting articles too. But anyways, a couple of months ago they had a supplement called Unwired and it was all about wireless stuff. (Unwired...get it?) Besides the fact that every third page had an ad involving Intel Centrino Technology (for those not immune to marketing hype -- they made processors/chipsets that use less power and have integrated wireless...nothing new), they also had a info about a cool piece of hardware from Sandisk. They call it "CF Connect" and it is a combination 128mb or 256mb CompactFlash memory card and 802.11b wireless card. That's super cool. Although the Sandisk site says nothing about it (nor the unwired site), there are a few news items about it. Maybe I should buy a Zaurus...Nah...

My computer graphics final project (game) rocks the house

I had to write a game for my final project for my computer graphics class. (OpenGL) I had originally wanted it to be very similar to S.T.U.N. Runner (an old arcade game), but I had a lot of trouble getting it to curve correctly (and draw/move right at the same time). So I just made it a tube-racing-type-thing or something. But anyways, for anyone who wanted to check it out, I compiled and zipped it up so you can play it for yourself. The game is windows only, but if someone out there wanted to, there is no reason it shouldn't port quickly to Mac OSX, Linux or any other operting system that GLUT was ported to because I didn't use anything that is operating system specific. But anyways, I thought folks might enjoy playing it, even though it isn't that fun.

Summer in Greensboro

I'm spending this summer in Greensboro, this is the first time I have spent the summer somewhere other than at home in Amherst or at camp in maine. North Carolina is a whole different beast. I've never lived somewhere that it is impossible to sleep without air conditioning. In Amherst, in July, during a heat wave, it is hard to sleep, but in North Carolina it is already so hot (in May!) that you couldn't really sleep many nights without AC. Thank god the school is paying for my electric bill and thus my AC...to me that is one big reason not to move off campus. If I lived in an apartment off campus I would have to not blast the AC all the time indiscriminantly. Besides the heat, I'm not that worried about the summer. I'm doing this program at my school called cadre...I work for the school 30 hours a week for minimum wage and they let me take 8 credits for free. When you do the math, it is essentially like getting paid $10 and hour and then paying for the tuition out of pocket. It's pretty good, except you used to (2 years ago) get free housing and food in with the deal too, but hey, you take what you can get. I will be working with my school's Information Technology and Services (ITS) department. Some of it will be grunt work (checking ports), but there should be some stuff that is more fun (setting up new servers, programming, etc). So hey, if you happen to be in/around Greensboro this summer, let me know, cause I will be there too.

So I added three new categories

Some of you might have noticed there are two new categories on the right hand side, Work, School and Blog. I meant to add them a while ago, but i didn't cause I am a lazy bastard. I might go back and move all of the relevant stuff out it's original categories, but probably not.

So I made deans list

I got a A- in Computer Graphics and Animation, a B+ in Images of the Earth (GIS) and an A- in Music and Contemporary Culture. That gives me a 3.53 GPA for this semester. It is kind of lame that only took 12 credits (I dropped German because I suck at it), but I'm still really happy with my grades. That brings my cumulative to 3.14, which is actually the same cummulative GPA I had at the end of my Junior year in high school too. It's funny the way numbers work out like that. Oh yeah, and because it is better than a 3.5 I made deans list again, yippee.

NES Games are fun

After spending much of a semester gathered around the dreamcast playing NES games, I've decided that the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) is awesome. One thing that was amusing was all of the "hacks" of games. That is, games that people had modified the sprites or text to make it something funny. Most of them were really lame, but there a couple are worth reading about. Super KKK Bros, Super KKK Bros 2 and the reactionary Blackman 2. If you only look at one of them check out Blackman...it's funny.

Home sweet home

So I am finally home at last. Back in Amherst. Geez I'm tired. I think I will blog up a storm tommorow. Cause I have all sorts of stuff I've wanted to write about, but haven't gotten the chance. Just y'all wait!

Final Project for my GIS/Geology Class

I am now finishing up taking my Images of the Earth class. Which is all GIS (Geographic Information Systsems) stuff. We use ArcView, GMT and ErMapper to do a variety of things from creating maps of the world to looking at populations densities geographically.

I had wanted to do my final project on density of wireless access points relating to property values or income. After some problems getting the data, I gave that up and quickly came up with another topic. I related incomes to use of public transportation and carpooling in Guilford County. Thanks to the folks at the City of Greensboro GIS department I got the ArcView shape files I needed and got my final project done before the semester ended. (I got really worried for a while.) So here it is, my final project. It isn't supposed to be as big as it is, (10 Pages with maps) but hey, what are you going to do.

Most annoying webpage ever.

Here is the the most annoying webpage ever. It's a self proclaimed title (who buys a domain name like that) and it would definately be on my top list, but without flash animations taking over your screen and pop-unders, I don't think it can be the worst EVER. But hey, it's pretty funny.

Ok. I hate my logo

I thought I would like it. I don't.

Someone come up with something else.

Please. It doesn't have to be anything good.

Just not this.

Stuck here, in the middle of nowhere,

With a headache, and a heavy heart,

Well nothing was going quite right here,

And I'm tired, I can't play my part

Oh come on, come on,

Oh what a state I'm in,

Oh come on, come on,

Why won't it just sink in?

Help is just around the corner, for us

Oh my head just won't stop aching,

And I'm sat here, licking my wounds,

I'm shattered,

But it really doesn't matter,

'Cause my rescue is going to be here soon

Oh come on, come on,

Oh what a state, I'm in,

Oh come on, come on,

Why won't it just sink in?

Help is just around the corner, for us,

And help is just around the corner, for us,

Oh that help is just around the corner, for us

Special Thanks to High Speed Coldplay

I don't know if I can do this whole college thing anymore

I'm getting really tired of college. I feel like a lot of it is totally useless. It seems like everything about Guilford that I liked it changing. But not just that. I'm tired of academia. I'm tired of doing things that have little value in the real world in the name of "education". Here is the work I have to get done:

Computer Graphics Final Project

GIS Final Project

Music and Culture Final Paper

Music and Culture concert reports (three of them)

I'm not sure I have time to do all this. And if I do have enough time, I'm not sure I will be able to motivate myself to actually get it done. It pretty much comes down to the fact that I am a slacker and can't get things done. I just want to go home. I want to be done. But no. Even once I get done, I have to come back down to GSO for Cadre (summer school + work). Speaking of work. I'm fed up with the people I work with too. I'm just tired of running around in circles. I want to work hard. I want to like the people I work around. I want to care about them, and I want them to care about me. I want to work as a team, and I want to be able to count on other people. I'm tired of being dependable. I never missed a shift all semester long. Not one. I missed today and left early yesterday. I don't know what's going on anymore. I'm out of touch with my own reality.

God I feel like your typical apatethic blogger.

BlogChalking?

I'm trying out something called BlogChalking. Maybe it will get more people to visit my site. I'm always amused that anyone at all, especially outside of my circle of friends, would ever actually be interested in what I write in my blog. So here goes: This is my new blogchalk:
United States, North Carolina, Greensboro, English, German, Peter, Male, 21-25.

Patrick Stewart's Small World

I was chatting with my friend emily yesterday, it was her birthday and we were joking about cake. Her cake had some cool graphics on it and I started making jokes about the sorts of things you could get put on a cake. She then told me about a saturday night live skit where Patrick Stewart sold cakes with pictures of women going to the bathroom on them. I had never seen it. 24hours later, Comedy Central had it on. I guess it's not that suprising, knowing Comedy Central. Check out the pictures yourself. (3/4 the way down). Seriously dude, who takes 43 video captures of a SNL ep?

Windowshade mode for Windows

MacOS has a wonderful feature that they call "window shade" mode. When you double click on the titlebar (or click a button next to maximize) it makes the window only the size of the titlebar. Apparently it originally started out as a hack and was then integrated into System 7. After doing this sort of thing manually with windows (you can resize windows so they are only as big as their titlebar), I wanted to be able to quickly do it. Double-clicking on the title bar flips between maximizing and restoring the window. I'm suprised no one has done this sort of thing for Windows XP. You can make any window transparent (Windows 2000/Windows XP only, no 95, 98 or ME sorry) but no one thought it would be worth it to make windows little. Stacking windows on top of each other with transparency would be more useful, right.

ASCII Star Wars

Some people have way too much time on their hands. Enough time in fact, that they create an ASCII Text Animation version of Star Wars. Get a life!

iTunes4 is dope

iTunes 4 is dope. The fact that it auto-discovers other playlists on the network (our network is pretty big!) is super cool. Already I see two other users playlists and it was only released 12 hours ago. It's awesome. Oh and I think the whole Apple Music idea, with 99cent/song downloads will totally take off. Now I just need to find a way to get an iPod...

Mod_Suru owns me

I followed a link to Experts Exchange today from google and was very pleasantly suprised. Mod_Suru had automatically highlighted the search terms I had used searching google. Beautiful. Like using the cached version of the page (or the google toolbar), but easier. I dig it. When finals get done, I might put that on this site too.

If the kama sutra wasn't enough

If sex-books confused you because they never had enough detail and line drawings weren't enough to teach you how to have good sex, I have the solution for you. Note: I stole this from stileproject.

Oh and you should check out smurf's doing lick my ass too. Its very odd.

Printing is the bane of my existance.

That is all.

More digging about where that brainsoup logo came from

Ok, so I did some digging. The original page that I stole the logo from linked to a page that wasn't there (No Server). The Wayback Machine was happy to give that page (circa 2001) though. I like that they have a big version too, so if I ever wanted to make a T-Shirt...I could probably do it.

Sorry about all the pictures as of late, maybe I should make my index page shorter so they go off the bottom faster.

New logo for brainsoup

Brainsoup now has a logo that fits. I liked the rubik's cube and all, but the whole PNG thing pissed me off...and I stumbled across this logo that I thought I would steal. I stole the logo from this site that just seemed to have a bunch of textures that were packages in a pack called brainsoup. Funny, eh?

Penny Arcade Strawberry Shortcake

Penny Arcade had to pull a comic because American Greetings got pissed. Here is that comic.

I haven't cried because I miss something in a while....Muenchen

I'm not usually the crying type. Usually I don't let my emotions take hold of me like that. I cried over this money issue with work (fighting to prove I had actually worked the hours I reported on my timesheet). Twice.

But since then (thursday/friday) I've been doing really well. But tonight, as I was browsing the web, I ran across something that made cry. It was the train schedule for munich. A god damn train schedule. I pushed me over the edge towards something I haven't let myself think about. I miss speaking german, I miss struggling to understand people, I miss working to do everyday things...It didn't make me tired, it just led to great satisfaction as I learned to do more and more of the things I would need to do to survive on my own.

I'm not sure if life was actually slower (I think it was), but also, it was even slower for me because everything was a struggle. Especially in the beginning I had to alot all sorts of extra time to getting anywhere because most of the time I would have to think a bunch about what trains to take.

Example afternoon: I'm at the Marientplatz station, I just got out of my art class. All I want to do is just disapear and do something that interests me, I have to check my email. (The only reason I found a place to use my laptop is because I went to dozens of libraries on different ocassions, different places and found but only one that allowed me to get onto the internet for free with my laptop. There were others with internet, some easier than others, but this location was definately the best for me. I could download anything that I had wanted or needed. Actually being able to run my preferred AIM client without having to set things up like in EasyEverything was enough to make it worth the trek.

Oi. Just looking at the map makes my want to go back to germany.

Peeps for easter

Peeps are the grossest thing ever.

Peephenge, Peep-o-nauts, Peep Research, Peep War, Peeps FAQ, Dr Fun's Peep-O-RAMA (April 14, 15, 16, 17, 18), Peeps on tour, Peeps on NPR, Peep Dance, Peep Art, Peep Poetry, Peep Poop, Ban Peep Research, Peep Tricks, Peep Porn, Deep Fried Peeps, More Peep Sex, Bunnies Strike back (more abuse) Peep Jousting, Peep Greeting Cards and make sure you get the real thing, not an immitation.

We are a sick county

To many people, this war is just another game, but sometimes the game is more than a first person shooter. It can even be a playing card game if you get the right deck.

GEEK: I want an AlphaServer (Ebay)

I feel like I've been letting the geek side of me slide lately. I haven't synced my palm since it's batteries died a month ago, (Yes, a month with no palm!) I don't have linux installed on my laptop, I'm not getting sued for 98 billion dollars and thus, I need an alpha server.

Seeing as this AlphaServer 2100 (4x233) didnt sell for $99 (relisted...got that one bid.) But this listing has one that might be more interesting (4x200, pulled from working environment). But really deep down inside I just want to take the gamble on this item. No idea which AlphaServer 2100 model it is, but it has 9 2gb drives and tape drive in it. Oh yeah and it "has a few cards in the back". Makes me want to make that leap. But of course, the prospect of their quoted $240 for shipping (+$30 for handling) snaps me back

Slashdot is a funny place

First off, users who have mod points on slashdot are predictable. (My comment.) It's not like most the time I actually have anything to say, I just happen to refresh slashdot when it has a new story and when I read the comments no one said something that should already have been said a while ago. It is just funny.

I broke time on the linux box hosting this site

I broke time. Time was totally fucked up for a while there. It thought it was was 10AM or something. But now it is fixed. And I didn't even have to edit the time on entries. I don't know why. Nor do I care.

But anyways, to anyone who runs linux. And wants time syncronization. Run ntpdate not ntp. Way easier and simpler. Apparently ntp is designed for small ammounts of "drift" betwen servers, not correcting a messed up clock. With ntp, you clock will drift back to the correct time/date, but not immediately. Nope. Not for me. I need instant gratification. I trust NTP servers out there. If anyone wants to fake that info to try to attack my computer, let them have their way. I just don't care that much.

Beavis and Butthead on DVD

I wouldn't actually want to buy it, but I wish I could borrow it from a friend or rent it. Beavis and Butthead on DVD

Trigger Happy TV is dope

Comedy Central Trigger Happy TV is funny as hell. Too bad the Comedy Central website is fucked and I never found a link directly to the show and had to type it in myself. Grr. The ad they had for it pointed to Chappelle'ss Show. But anyways, the episode I just watched had a sketch where they attach a dog to the bathroom key they give out at a gas station, to "keep people from stealing the key". Fucking awesome.

BlogSnob pisses me off

BlogSnob seemed like a cool idea to me. I've been tunning the text ad in the left column for a while now. The way it works is every page view of my blog generates my text ad being seen on someone elses blog. Pretty simple concept. (There is some weighting towards less viewed blogs so that big blogs don't get all the hits) But as it turns out, a few weeks ago they magically lost my account. So I've been running ads and generating karma for some other blog other my own. It sucks ass. I also like the idea of SnobJumping which is using blogsnob to jump from blog to blog going to sites you have never been to before.

I feel like an idiot

I want to be able to let users create accounts (and post anonymously, don't fret) ... but I can't seem to get it to work with Nucleus. I have the options I think I need turned on. If any of you figure out how to create accounts, I would like to know.

So speaking to the subject line. I feel like an idiot. I can't even run my own blog.

I'm tired of working here at school

I'm tired of the people I work with.

I'm tired of office politics.

I'm tired of getting paid minimum wage.

I'm tired of getting no recognition.

I'm tired of taking on extra responsibilities, but getting nothing in return for it.

I'm just tired of working here.

I don't know how long I can stay, but I can't get any other real job with my nasty school schedule.

I'm just tired.

Blue Hair

Some of you out there wanted pictures of me with blue hair.

Here they are:

New deftones song

Gabe sent me an mp3 of the Deftones song Minerva. It's a cool song, you should check it out. If you have trouble downloading it, let me know. Note: if you block/fake referrers in your browser, this won't work.

I am less sick now

After two days of missing class and letting my homework overtake me, I am now less sick. Notice I said less sick, not "I am all better now." I still have nasty chest congestion and such.

I also went to my Geology (GIS) class for the first time in a while. I don't feel that bad cause I missed class. It will probably catch up with me on the final, but I am glad I don't have more work to do for TOMMOROW.

My logo looks sucky in Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer kills my logo. (But only on Windows.) IE for windows, instead of honoring the PNG tranparency layer, just displays it as a grey background. Grrr... It does work on IE for Mac, Mozilla for everything, Opera for everything, etc.... It just turns out that on the platform that 90% of visitors use, it is broken.

Drip

Drip. Right on my leg. Snot dripping out my nose. Eww.

I think I have SARS

I think I have SARS. I have a headache. General mental cloudyness, a slight fever, a pretty bad cough that just doesn't seem to want to go away, a runny nose and I just plain miserable. I can't sleep at all because I just can't get comfortable. I'm glad I'm not spending a year/semester in China as some other Guilford students are. Check the map to see why. It actually makes me nervous to see all of the United States grouped together like that. Kuwait has one case, but is 1/100 the size. Cases in the U.S. are completely not localized. I don't think I actually meet the definition of SARS, but it would super suck if I did have it. I have direct contact with dozens of people (working at the Helpdesk) in addition to all of my classes.

Right now I just want to die. I wish I could sleep.

I can't sleep

I can't sleep. I'm not sure why. My brain is just seems to be working very quickly with nothing to process.

The guy who did this honda ad is Rube Goldberg

Rube did something even more complex before, a 30 minute film called The Way Things Go. Check it out, I would really like to see it.

I love ads

Those of you who know me, know I have a thing for ads. I used to love AdCritic, but alas it isn't free now. I have even looked into the subscription options (yes, I am willing to pay to watch ads). Today Slashdot had a story about an awesome Honda UK ad that took 606 attempts to get right. I recommend you check out the ad. It is a two minute sequence of objects hitting and moving each other (some what like the kids board game MouseTrap). If the honda site is slow, you can check out my quicktime(11.6MB) local mirror. I could never get the flash version to work, so I just mirror the QT. If you live in the UK you can get it on DVD or VHS for free. Makes me want to buy a Honda Accord. Sort of.

Five year tattoos

In London they advertised five year tattoos. Sounds cool right? It is a Big Lie.

Anti-drug ads have come a long way since an egg

We have come a long way since the "this is your brain on drugs" and "no one ever says I want to be a junkie when I grow up" ads. Scare tactics are simlar, but now presented in a more "ha-ha you're stupid and wrong" without proper scientific evidence behind it. When visiting IGN I got this ad (local mirror - flash required) for Freevibe.com. From the same people who brought you the pot funds terrorism (False) banner ad. Oh and if all that wasn't enough, check out the pop up I got when I visited freevibe. I won't question whether smoking pot increases drop out rates, but I will say this: At any decent high school, if you don't to cite sources of your "facts", and reach conclusions before actually doing any investigation you shouldn't need to be kicked out or drop out. You should FAIL. Grrr.

Oh, I did Nucleus 2.0 Final

I did it. I'm not running 2.0 Beta anymore. NO ONE CARES.

Delayed postings

I am toying with future dating entries on my blog. That means they won't actually show up on the blog immediately after I write them, they show up when I specify. The next couple of entries are like that. It might be stupid. I'm not sure, I've never had a reason to do it before. I just don't like all my blog entries clumped together (6 in 2 hours and none for days). It is the sort of thing that would be useful for holidays, while on vacation and birthday messages. Let me know what you think.

War in Iraq, the greatest reality tv show of all time

I never thought of it so clearly until I read the headline for this salon story. This war is just the natural progression for Americans. Simulated conflict isn't enough, we need the real deal. The cover of this week's TVGuide touches on it too. (No article text). I am no fan of censorship. I just wouldn't know how to raise children of my own between GTA3 Vice City, films like The Matrix and a War on live TV. (Note: I like the Matrix and GTA3, I just wouldn't know how to instill a sense of reality in children.)

I mean really, there aren't going be any movies like Hamburger Hill, Platoon or Saving Private Ryan about the wars in Iraq. Cause they just weren't that bad. How will children learn to appreciate that war is not just something quick and easy you always win. In any war there are casulties, usually in human lives, always in other ways too. But in this war, we don't feel any of them. What sort of disincentive will we have against going to war in the future. Only economic. Which is gross.

Dope old school games -- SkyRoads

I found a really cool game. It is super old-school (DOS) and is quite fun. It is called SkyRoads. It is a driving type game where you have to make jumps and move around and stuff (a little hard to explain). I really like it. I've been playing it a lot since this morning. The folks who originally made it have been kind enough to put up the full version available for download. If you have access to a DOS machine play it, but be warned, it is mildly addicting.

There is one other cool thing. Bluemoonis still doing development on other projects. Guess what else they helped write... FastTrack (now owned by Joltid). FastTrack is the technology behind the largest and one of the most advanced P2P networks out there. (Used in Kazaa, Imesh and Grokster.) I'm not sure exactly the relationship with Sharman Networks (but Sharman is F*CKED.

Small world, ain't it?

Very Sexy Pictures...well, to me

I try to read Salon every once in a while, I really like the non-mainstream stuff. Some of it is similar to what shows up in the New York Times on Sunday, but a lot of it is different. I just stumbled across a review Dave Naz's book of photos Panties. I don't think I have a fetish for panties or anything, but I do really like things natural. It is a book of photos of women in panties (many of which he bought himself...LOL!) No makeup. No post-production touch up. No super soft lighting. No special filters. Just real women, dirty feet, bruises, blemishes and all. I find it really sexy. Check it out. And for those of you like me, you can get a free subscription for a day for watching a 30second ad. Seeing as right now I don't have the $18.50 for my own subscription it is worth it. I did have a subscription last year that I had gotten for christmas, but this year my aunt gave me a subscription to Wired instead.

Another problem with windows
I know I shouldn't of installed WindowsXP. I should get rid of my Thinkpad and get an iBook. Apparently Visual Studio 97 doesn't run too well under WindowsXP. Maybe Visual Studio .NET would work better. (Even though I have a copy of it, I'm not going there!) But anyways, he comes the screenshot. Visual Studio crashed and is asking me if I want to open Visual Studio to debug it.

I want toys
I want a super geeky toy.

Mike -- I'm looking at you (You've been wanting something to use a PIC for...)

A remotely controllable 256 color pulsating lamp.

Info from someone who knows more than me:
A friend of mine John is contributing some guest commentary on the video mentioned in a previous entry.

"What you witnessed in the IR assessment film is actually quite standard for AC130 Gunship operations in Afghanistan and presently in Iraq. The gunship is commonly used for close air support and ground suppression ops and is, as you witnessed, a formidible weapon. The weapon used in this attack was most likely a 105mm Howitzer cannon specially fitted for this aircraft.

Given the proximity of the of parties leaving the Mosque to the hillside cave entrance, it is likely that the order was given to attack Taliban fighters while caught out in the open. The comm-chatter from the Gunship indicated that rules of engagement were followed prior to attacking targets in that locale.

As I have commented before, war is not some reality television show, or small slices of news combat footage. As I discovered in Desert Storm, war is a horrible business. I suspect that this attack footage was probably leaked by military personal keeping this footage for personal use, or the like."

What else is there to say.
People are dying.

I am as disturbed as I have ever been.
I'm not drinking anymore.

I'm not smoking anymore.

I'm just very disturbed.

I want to cry and be outraged.

I don't know how to present this.

Don't watch this if you don't want to be suprised and ashamed of the American military representing us in Iraq. Just don't do it. It is one thing to come after people with guns and try to kill them, or if they choose not to fight, let them surrender. Anyone who says "smart-bombs" and such allow for a cleaner war (read: less american death) need to take a look at this. What we were (are) involved with in Afganistan is shooting fish in a barrel. Literally. I hope to god somehow that this tape isn't real, but I am pretty sure it is. I feel gross. GTA3: Vice City isn't enough for me now. I need a bigger thrill. Maybe I need the real thing. Just killing people with no consequences, when they have no oppertunity to see your faces, let alone fight back or even surrender..

Another mirror, or 2 3 4 5 or local. (Windows Media Required: Lemme know if that works on Macs -- it should)

Learn more about the AC-130 Gunship

I feel sick. I am more sickened by the fact that this video is very easy to find on the internet and some people are upset, but some people are excited and happy about it. I've never seen it in the media. I wish someone would get outraged.

This weekend is really boring
This weekend is turning out to be pretty weak. Todd and Brian have to work Friday and Saturday nights at Applebees (and they don't get back till 1-2am), Cameron is gone to his girlfriend, bowling was weak last night and of my close friend group that just leaves me and Amy. Don't get me wrong, I love hanging out with Amy, but I like hanging out many friends at the same time. A friend of mine who lives in one of the on campus houses (The Pines) is having a party tonight, which should be cool. Additionally one of my other friends (Ben) has a show tonight. I should go see his band, they were pretty good last time I saw them.

I should go to bowling
I should really go to bowling. I'm late. I'm letting the rest of my team down. Too bad I don't really want to go.

I have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks
I only have like four weeks left in school. That is not very many. Before the end of the term I have three Final Projects to do. (In additional to all the other normal work I have to do.) I have a computer graphics final, for which I am going to make the old Atari arcade game S.T.U.N. Runner. (I'm excited). For my Geology/GIS class I am going to get a bunch of data about wireless access points (probably from something like NodeDB) and then try to find a coorelation between that and something like property values (I think it might work). For my Music and Culture class I am writing a 10-12 page paper about the future of radio. (Internet radio, digital radio and the likes.) But now, instead of doing any of that (or the work i am behind on) I am going to go watch Southpark. It's new this week.

Getting naked for peace
I am a firm believer in peace. But would I get naked to make that statement? I'm not sure.

Pride, Wrath, Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth and Envy
Geek Sins. Cool!

I hate fox news
Liberal Media my ass. Grr...

Yesterday (tonight) was my birthday
On my brithday next year. I want cake. Possibly ice cream. And definately, at least one present.

So my school can't send mail to AOL.com
No one on Guilford College campus can send mail to AOL.com email addresses. This is directly due to two problems. 1) a new server we brought online a week and a half ago was setup as an open-relay (e.g. place to send spam through). 2) We don't do reverse DNS lookups (IP to Name in addition to Name to IP). The first issue is rectified, but now that they put us on there "bad history" list, they require things (reverse DNS) that they didn't before. I have mixed feelings. Part of me says: "Inflict good practices unto bad admins" and part of me says "don't block mail from a site which isn't spamming you." I my mind I have no problem with AOL saying: "if you want to send mail to us, you have to do X, Y and Z" ... but where I get messed up when they sya "certain servers need X and Y, but certain need X, Y, Z.". In this case Z is reverse DNS. There is no reason not to do it in the first place, but our IT director made an interesting point: "there should be set standards. We shouldn't follow a moving target." and something along the lines of "should they be able inflict network policies on us just so we can send mail to them?"

After I got to thinking about it, I started to wonder if I there would be a legal case for this. I don't think there is precedent, but hear me out. Phone companies can't not accept phone calls just because they are from unlisted numbers. Clients can choose to do this, or they could ask their phone company to do it, but they cannot have that choice taken away. All AOL users have had that right taken away. Is AOL a utility and responsible under those same high standards? I'm not sure. But I know in a certain town, their ISP is a utility (and municipally owned too. And thus has strict requirements to serve the community. Yet another reason Holyoke is actually a pretty cool place to live.

DiscountTech and give me a job
Any non-profits out there. Since you are probably not ready to take the linux plunge, at least don't pay Microsoft for software. Get it from DiscountTech. I remember when I was working at Holyoke Health Center we got a bunch of stuff from them for free. It is not actually 'free' you have to pay a small fee. (Like want a Cisco AP for $40? -- I wish I was still doing nonprofit IT stuff at HHC, then I could get to buy toys like this and make big advances (more wireless) for next to nothing. That's the sort of stuff that used to make me feel good about myself and my job. I miss that in my current working environment. Maybe I need to quit school and start working at a non-profit again. So not only will I still know a lot, but I will actually be able to try out all sorts of different things to see if they would help the organization. I really would like to have a job I would -WANT- to work hard for. If anyone is looking for a IT person, I'd like a job. Check out my resume. And to any of my friends, keep your eyes open, I'm looking for something non-profit, hopefully healthcare.

Gabe got me thinking about accessability
Gabe's comments off this post really got me thinking. I have had an interest lately (initially sparked by stealing gabe's resume form and making my resume based off it. Since I been really interested in css and accessiblity. My college's website is not accessible to blind or otherwise empared users. I just to see kids coming in with terrible vision and they can hardly read the text on the screen. But because we didn't plan very well with our website, they have NO WAY of making the text on the screen bigger so they can read it without straining. They are just now beginning to consider the ADA. (This not this ADA)

I haven't read OSNews lately (warning super-geeky link), but I did come across this on google. OSNews is trying to support a bijillion platforms. It makes me want to be one of those crazy folks spending all their time and money making sure their site looks nice everywhere. I mean, seriously, how many sites are WAP enabled? The big news sites, parts of the big namers (Yahoo), but not much else. Google is using their indexing technology to make the market easir to tackle. Much easier to have google provide you access to the internet in a simplified form than for developers to actually target small browsers. Wireless providers pay for this service, not website designers. I would be willing to work a little harder on my website, and help out others with getting their site to display properly on a small device if the cost of mobile browsing weren't so prohibitively expensive. When I had a cell phone (I let mine go over a month ago) browsing the web was actually more expensive (per minute?) than talking on the phone with someone. SMS (although it existed in a different form) was also prohibitively expensive. I want to be able to browse the web and SMS without limits at a decent speed. Sprint PCS Vision is the only option I really see, and that is still $45/mo for 300mins and unlimited data. It is too bad I don't have anyone to share a minute plan with (I am love-less at this moment in time), but for only $100 a month sprint has a very nifty plan. (It's on the far right). Two phones, 2000 Minutes to share, unlimited night and weekends, free long distance, unlimited PCS to PCS calling and unlimited Vision Data services. $100. I'm positive, that it would be hard to use all those minutes. Since only M-F between 7am and 9pm is counted against those minutes. You would have to -each- average 50 minutes a day in those hours. That is a lot of talking. Oh and how much would I need to talk if I could just browse the web or use AIM. I would bet much less (no more calling TellMe (800-555-TELL) for movies, weather and such...SMSing instead of calling (sometimes I just like to give a message, not actually talk)...

I can imagine the freedom. It would allow me to work outside anytime I ever wanted to, almost anywhere. I could work in my car if I wanted, I could run the laptop while someone else was driving. I could actually take my mind off the road while riding with other people. I could totally deal with public transportation (trains and such) over long distances if I had high speed internet access the whole way (without paying by the minute). All of that is a dream though. I am a poor college student and get no toys. I want toys.

Blog Time Warp....
So I haven't blogged in a while. It's amazing. It's something we here call serendipity, other places call it spring fling. Whatever you want to call it, it's a whole different experience, something unlike spring break or any other party. On this weekend, I was able to party as much as my soul could take. Partying, drinking, smoking getting messed up and having a great time doing it. For 12 hours out each day, I was able connect to everyone around me. I met tons of new people I would never have otherwise seen, I ended up meeting some of the few people I don't know here at Guilford and realize that I think these kids are cool. I ran into Aaron Saunders, who is a younger brother of someone I went high school with, Mara Saunders. Crazy world, it's small. Also there is another girl here from amherst too. It's wierd.

I feel like serendipity will be under represented in this blog, as it actually was a very large part of my life and keeping me sane. Day after day escaping from any and all obligations in the world. Some people worried about the work that they had to get done, some spent their evenings workings, some talked but passed it on...I never thought about anything that I had to do for school, work, bills, anything. I didn't think but for more than a few seconds what I would actually do. My mind and my body had few goals in life other than to be chilled. I just had a great time and couldn't remember how to even worry but for a few rare moments. 95% Percent positive, much better than any normal week could dream of.

So I just installed Windows XP
I did it. I sold my soul to the devil. So I saw something new on the start menu, "Windows Catalog". Being as I had no idea what that was, I decided to click on it. Here is a picture of what came up. I think I now remember the reason I would never want to run Windows on the server side.

Been thinking about sex lately
I've been thinking about sex lately. Probably cause I haven't been getting enough. But anwyays. I just felt the need to drop a link to the greatest condom brand in the world...Pleasure Plus. No dude. I'm serious. Forget everything else, it is what you should use.

iBook Thinkpad trade
I have an IBM Thinkpad T21 laptop. It is my baby. I am typing on her right now. I made a comment today to a friend how I feel like I sold my soul by not buying an iBook. I really would like to be running OSX...cygwin just isn't quite cutting it. And so he said something that caught me off gaurd: "Do you wanna trade? I have a 700Mhz ibook and I would rather have a PC." Wow. I had never really thought about giving this computer up. From a pure value perspective, the iBook is actually worth more (ebay value) ... and we all know that a 700Mhz G3 will for all practical purposes run similar or better than the 800Mhz PIII I have in the thinkpad. I'm not sure how serious he really is, but I have to actually think about whether I would -REALLY- prefer to be running a iBook or whether i just like to talk the talk. Am as big of a Mac head as I would like to think of myself as? Or am I just holding out for something with a G4 cause that's really what I want.

Girls Girls Girls
It has been a long time coming, but I have been broken up with my girlfriend of two years for a while now, and I am finally starting to allow myself to see options around me. I'm not sure if other people have this feeling too, but when I was in High School, I always felt like I had more options when I was commited to someone. I always justified it as people were more comfortable around me because they knew I was unavailable. But the fact that I was in this last relationship for a long period of time and that so many aspects of it were really good (I never had to lie. I could and did always tell the truth) I think I stopped even thinking about other options in any form. In the last month or so I have been making a concious effort to meet new people. Both guys and girls, but mostly girls as I always associated and connected with girls better than I did with guys. Currently there are a couple of girls that I have some romantic interest in. Today I made the effort to conciously engage in conversation (read: went out a limb) and it worked out great. I just wish I knew how to progress things quicker. This particular girl I only see a few days a week and then only for a limited time -- I wonder how to make the transition to meeting socially. I also have some other little possible interests, most of which I would characterize as unlikely for something short term and not what I really want in the long term. Oh how I wish they would read my blog and let me know this all isn't one sided.

I've been a bad boy
As of recent I haven't been doing very much blogging. That's actually too bad, cause I think I could use the release and oppertunity to creatively express myself. If you call this creative. But anyways. I got Awstats working nicely so now i get some nifty statistics out of my logs. There are some interesting things, for me one of the most interesting being the massive number of hits my XML RSS feed. I'm not sure if that is from the ping sites that check that for updates or what, maybe I should look into that. I don't know too many people reading this site anyways, and certainly not that many using blog reading tools that grab the XML. Something else that makes me feel good is that somebody, somewhere, is running Galeon. Yay. And I guess I am an interesting link for "birth control methods pictures". I have pictures. I have an entry about birth control. Come on google, make some relevancy coorelations here. But I digress. Check them out if you want. It's mostly just interesting and you get a little voyeuristic feeling of seeing who is looking at the site.

To blog or not to blog
I wonder sometime swhat is appropriate to include in this blog. Sometimes I wish there were a way to have private journal along with this public blog. I know I could do such things with more feature packed software, but that's not what I am running right now. But software aside there is a greater issue at stake. Whether certain topics and ideas pouring from my brain are something which should be include in BS. The deeper question I guess is "What is BrainSoup?" Is it a personal journal, a collection of links, a place for people to find out about me? Is it primarily for me or for others that view it? I guess because it is a published source by nature, there is some level of editing and censorship that goes on. I wish I could have some way to publish what actually came out of my mind without having to deal with the aftermath of explaining the insanity that is my internal monologue.

Best friends come with attachments
There are a many things that are great about having a best friend that you totally connect with. Too many to even list. One of the greatest things is having someone who understands almost everything about you with little or no explanation. The way that I can connect with another person simply amazes me and makes me feel wonderful on a daily basis, but sometimes it sucks. It sucks when you don't know what's going on. And they don't want to talk about it. Because in my case I mirror much of the intensity associated with the situation, but get none of the resolution and satisfaction associated with empathy. I'm blind. But I guess there are things you keep. Even from those you love. I guess I just haven't found something worth keeping hidden like that.

Coldplay is cool
I've been listening to an awful lot of coldplay ever since I went off to germany. They were pretty good live, made much better by some super cool lasers, but good none the less. But lately I've really taken a liking to a bunch of unreleased material available on something called "without parachutes". It's a play on their parachutes album as it is all B-sides and such. Very good. Anyone who wants a copy of it should drop me a line.

I want to be a transformer
Don't you wish you could be a transformer too!

Puking sucks
Throwing up sucks. Last night, I didn't feel very good and got sick again. I'm not really sure how it happened, but last night I lost a few hundred calories, not by burning them off, but by bringing them back up. It sucked. I hate puking.

I hate some people
I am really getting tired of having to plan on how to talk to someone because they are not enough of an adult to actually be civil and carry on a conversation without being a jerk. I have two different feelings about how to handle this. I know I could plan for it, and be careful about what I say and I will probably get what I want in the end. The other option is to not play into this at all and treat him like anyone else. There is a big part of me that as of recently feels like I should not reinforce anyone else's bad behavior by modifying my behavior to avoid it.

I guess it boils down to this. Why can't people be smart and have interpersonal skills?

I really wish I had a place to find new music
Ever since about a year ago, when my school strangled (not cut off) access to Kazaa, I've don't quite know where to look for new music I've never heard before. One thing I used to do was go to Art Of The Mix and then search for songs I did like. Along with these songs, would be other songs someone thought were similar enough to put on a mixtape. Usually after downloading the track they included I was able to get an idea what kind of music it was and decided whether I liked them or not. That's how I got to liking Stereolab and Coldplay. Both of which I ended up buying CDs of. I tend to agree with the research Slashdot recently posted about.

So for right now, I have no way of actually finding out new music. The reason the AOTM and Kazaa combo worked for me was that it was quick and easy and almost instant gratification. Maybe I can do a little bit of that now that I can download stuff to mike's computer using Citrix. Yeah it's overkill for this, but how else can I download stuff off kazaa at decent speeds. (This way I download it that computer, and then download it from there to my laptop. It's inefficient, but the only way I can easily get around my school's installation of Packeteer's PacketShaper.)

I just want a way to find out about new music. Radio just doesn't do it. Certainly not here in the Greensboro. Oh and BTW I added a new Music category to my blog.

I have TV at school now, I'm not sure how I feel about that
So I brought a TV back to school with me. I wouldn't have needed one, but my roommate keeps his pointed at his desk and when I suggested that we could rearrange so that other people could see, he was like "I really like it here, it's much more convienent." Jeezums. I think my roommate must hate me for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which being that I keep him up every night (doing things like this entry). It's funny. We actually get along pretty well, he is just a little anti-social (he won't come hang out with us whenever we ask) and every hour he isn't in class or at meals he spends in the room. This makes it very difficult to persue any sort of romantic possibility. Where in previous years or in other situations I could invite someone up to have a cup of coffee or such, because he is always there, I know it will never go anywhere. That and I feel like he is always watching and listening when I have friends over. It really creeps me out.

Noam Chomsky
On the 13(!) hour drive back to school (alone) I decided I didn't just want to waste that time listening to whatever radio I happened to be able to find, but I should actually absorb some knowledge. I have re-found my personal hero as a result. Before leaving home, I put on my eye patch and downloaded some Noam Chomsky lectures in mp3. This is reason I bought an MP3 cd player. I had something like 10-15hrs of Noam Chomsky and the CD was only half-full with that stuff. You can find some audio of your own (without needing to have peg-leg) over at ZMag. Maybe that's where I should have looked first, but I didn't.

If you don't know anything about Mr Chomsky, I suggest you find something he has written and give it a quick read. Almost everything there is like two pages, the kind of thing you can read while waiting for something to download (or for a bagel to toast for you breakfast reader types). The man has insights into aspects of world politics and economics that I could only dream of. All of this impressed me to a great degree, but then I was blown away again when I found something else out. I knew that he was a Professor of Linguistics, but not until I heard a tape of him speaking at UNH about linguistics did I catch onto what his strong subject actually was. You can buy your own copy of this tape from Radio Free Maine. It is the 4/12/95 one. I would highly recommend this for anyone who has any curiousity about Linguistics, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Speech Recognition, Philosophy or is just curious in general. If you want a copy of this in MP3, post a comment or just email me and we can work something out.

Bikes
So I brought my bike back down to school in hope that I would actually ride it and get some much needed exercise. I need to go to the bike shop to get a pump (the tires are a little flat) and an adapter because I have funky valves (they are little) which are not the normal size. I also need to find a place to put my bike. I think I will take down the sign in the stairwell that says no bikes so that they can't get mad at me when I lock my bike up there.

SQL would eat my for breakfast without even a burp
So I've been trying to catch up on some work I needed to for a work-study type thing I've been doing. It's been dealing with institutional research things. Things such as class size, credits per instructor, etc, etc. So I got a nasty ass rich text document and I need to convert it into a form which I can use for actually doing number crunching on. So in something like 25hrs (so far) I've managed to learn perl (enough to clean up the data and fix some missing fields) and now I finally have a reason to actually learn SQL. There are two major reasons that I have been putting off learning to do SQL like-type-stuff. 1) I wanted a decent reason to do so (I hate non-real world practice, I need to have the real deal) and 2) I didn't have a nice, easy way to get my data in. I looked into doing it with perl itself and it frightened me. So I looked for a library. There weren't any really (not that were easy for me) so I tried out Electronic Microsystem's MySQL manager. I have toyed with similar products and never been impressed, in fact I have never even been able to do what I wanted. Wow. This program was so simple for me to use. All I had to do was setup an SSH tunnel for port 3306 and I was on my way. (I could have opened the port using the firewall at home, but why?) I was able to import directly from excel into tables defining the mapping between columns. Very cool. Much easier than doing it any other way I can think of. I would definately recommend it. They also have Postgresql manager too, too bad it is only Win32/Linux (sorry OSX nerds). I am going to try to get my school to buy me a copy. I really want it.

Also, while trying to learn SQL from a free ebook and Phil Greenspun's SQL for Web Nerds I realized how much of a small world it is. While reading the section on Complex Queries I read the comments...and who has the last comment, but my good friend gabe. Too funny.

Cheerios are Yummy.
Yummy yummy in my tummy!

Customized Menus
Office 2000/Windows 2000 introduced the silliest concept to the world. Customized menus. They might be great for the super-wiz kid, but for your mother they suck ass. When your mother is searching for where a menu-item is, she doesn't find it, cause a third of the menu is hidden from her cause she hasn't used it very often (or ever). They are on by default. I would imagine this alone has contributed to tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of hours of lost productivity.

A second gripe I have is with Office2000's "feature" to make standard and formatting toolbars share on row. Its ok at 1024x768, don't even try it at 800x600. That too is on by default. I can move past that. But in OfficeXP that option (still found under Tools--Customize) has changed ever so slightly. It now says: "Show standard and formatting toolbars on two rows". Now it has the inverse meaning as before. God I hate it when people change design concepts on me. It doesn't matter that the latter is more intuitive, consistancy is what matters. Any REAL user interface designer could tell you that.

OfficeXP
So, after trying to clean up my laptop and move stuff around to prepare it for the reinstall, I am now forced to reinstall officeXP. Poopies. I thought I would be able to do this reinstall soon, but because I don't have a CD-Burner I have to wait. Because I have to wait, I need to do stuff I had planned for tommorow, today. Part of which involves using eXcel. (I had hoped I would be able to do it all in perl, but lets be serious folks, I'm no Perl God.) OfficeXP does have a couple of cool features that actually make me want to use it. The most important of which being speech. It can read back word documents and such to you. That means that I can actually hear how a paper sounds. That makes it much easier for me to track down grammar errors. I think this is something my school should look into, so kids don't have to use Kurzweil anymore. (Although they could, cause I think it is a also a generalized screen reader for blind people. Oh and I stumbled across something really funny a couple of weeks ago. In the Options for VisualStudio97 (oh my god it's 6 years old! I need to upgrade to VisualStudio .net -- right) there is an option to turn on screen reader compatible menus. I gotta wonder. How would a blind person navigate to the options since this is off by default. Grr...Stupid people.

My laptop needs a makeover
My laptop is getting a little messed up. It has been like 9 months since I last installed windows. So I want to reinstall Windows, Office, EVERYTHING. So I gathered up all the necessary applications that I will need to reinstall, but there is one thing I still can't decide -- what OS am I going to run. Anyone who knows me, knows I would never run any non-NT flavor of windows (Win98/WinME/WinXP Home). So I've been running Windows 2000 since just after SP1 came out. Pretty soon SP4 will be out. So I've been looking at Windows XP, not because it looks cool, or because it has super agressive licensing/activation enforcement (which I hate) or that I need to have something cooler than all my friends. It's cause it has nifty wireless support. All sorts of super cool wifi stuff. Additionally, I am wondering if the Windows XP drivers for my video card (S3 Savage IX 8mb) might be better than the terrible ones I have now for Windows 2000. Or maybe Microsoft will have a driver built in that is good. Additionally, I feel like if I am going to run Windows XP I might as well use Office XP too. And hell, if I am going to run Office XP I might as well upgrade to Visio XP/2002 and Project XP/2002. Random rant: Why can't microsoft decide on using XP or 2002 for their product names. For example Visio and Project are 2002 and most of the rest of office is XP. WTF.

Blogs may kill me yet
A couple of days ago I stumbled across a blog that wasn't just useless personal rantings. (Or directly product related like software maintainers writing about what they are developing now.) This blog actually provided content. It was a wierd feeling. http://www.morestuff4less.com/ has a bunch of really good deals. Like some of which are hard to not buy (must...resist...evil...power......must not spend money you don't have...) But anyways...I really want a "SMC SMC7004VWBR Barricade Wireless VPN Cable / DSL Router". I wish I didn't spend money on beer last week. Look what I could have had instead. $19.98 for god sakes. (I know they would have my $40 for like 6 weeks) But I wish I had enough cushion that I could afford buy something like this, without worrying about money.

I really need to get that job at Poppa Johns. I guess I could do that. It will just make less time for school work. I really think I may have to quite working ITS (i am commited for this semester, but really, I don't think I can afford to work there for so little money. $5.40/hr for god sakes. Paid monthly none the less. It is just asking for people to quit. I don't think Guilford's human resources department realizes how inconvient paychecks like that is for students. When I got back to school this January I worked for 4 days. Then new cycle began. I didn't get the payment for those hours until 6 weeks later. Six weeks is a really long time to delay gratification. I seem to be able to work hard in the beginning, but after I've gone a month without a paycheck I kind of burn out.

So in summation. I want wireless in my room and I don't have the money to pay for it.

I swear to god my life is one terrible movie after another
After a previous post about my deep spiritual connection to High Fidelity, I have noticed as of late, that my entire life is different scenes from different movies. Some dramas, but mostly romantic comedies. In fact in the last few days everything in my life that didn't come from some movie (that I can remember) seems like it would fit together to actually make a nice movie. I've been talking about it for a while...maybe now is the time to write my own movie.

I haven't been blogging a lot lately
I really haven't been blogging like I would like to. I've been partying too hard and travelling too much. I would think I that I would really like something like an AOL communicator or such. Too bad they cost thirty bucks a month, plus the cost of AOL, plus a hundred bucks for the hardware. I remember when I used to read Justin Frankel's .plan. He said something about tweaking it so he could update his plan that way...I bet I could get my blog working like that too. Oh wait. I'm not a badass like he is. Hehe... For those of you who don't know, Justin is the lead developer behind the greatest media player of all time. iTunes. Just kidding. Winamp. iTunes has dreams of being as compact and efficient as winamp. I actually learned something from reading his plan too, there will be a new version of winamp (2.9) coming out in the next couple of days. That makes me happy.

But anyways, updating my blog from other places gets me thinking. LiveJournal has a update client for PalmOS devices, but I never used livejournal, so I couldn't try it out. Maybe I should write an update client for palm myself. I think I have an mastery of the palm side well enough and since it should be as simple as just posting form data to a PHP script it shouldn't even be that tough. In fact, I bet if I wrote the palm side, I could convince someone else to write the PHP stuff (so it wouldn't be broken security wise). I would just have to break down and write a conduit.

The other way I could do it, which is something I had been considering anyways was getting a two-way pager. They are cheaper than a cell phone and I could have fun setting up all sorts of perl scripts to automagically do some funky stuff based on emails I send. Arch has a model (Motorola T900) which is only $150 and plans start at $10 for 10,000 characters and go up to $40 for unlimited characters. I have no idea what my usage would be. I would also want to make sure I could SMS on it to other people's phones. That would be cool though...

Driving makes me crazy
After driving 13hrs last night into this morning (plus another 3 hours of sleeping in the car) I am now crazy. Lack of sleep does this to me, but in a different way. It's hard to describe. I have a general feeling of soreness throughout my body, but at the same time I have a feeling of aggitation that makes it hard for me to actually get anything done. I should really go to sleep. But I am not going to. I'm just going to rot my brain on the interweb.

Midterms make me feel funny
I'm not quite sure how I got here. Half the semester is over. I leave for spring break in 5 days. How can I be done with this much. I have done next to nothing. Even though I am working hard in one of my classes, I still don't feel like I have acoomplished that much. I don't think I did very well on either of the midterms that I took last week. I wanted to cry after I left my OpenGL midterm. I knew some of the stuff, but most of it was really hard for me to do on paper without being able to reference the docs. It is a similar feeling I've had while trying to write a German essay without a proper German disctionary. If I don't know one word, I spend a long time dancing around it when I wish I could just say it outright.

I also feel like I should be working on other things which I haven't even had the oppertunity to toy around with, such as my linux box. I really want to get Phynd running on it, but I tihnk I am just too retarded for that. Grrr.

Meeting new people is kind of hard
Meeting new people used to be something that I just did naturally. I couldn't help but meeting new people. Everytime I went somewhere I would end up talking to someone new and making new friends. It was really cool. This continued through the first few weeks of college, but once I settled with a group of friends, much of that began to fade. I hung out with the same crowd almost all of the time with little variation. I never minded it. Until now, when I am starting to expand my horizons as I seem to not have schedules which allow me to see my friends now. It is kind of funny, now instead of just acting like myself and meeting new people. I have to think about it some. It's not like I don't know how to do it, it's more like I am out of practice. I never thought of friendship building being like sports. Interesting thought.

Southpark, greatest show of all time
With lines like...Randy: Yes, uh... you see, Token... that was called a pornographic film uh, ih it shows adult men and adult women having sexual intercourse. [no response, long pause] Well, ya, you see, when a, when a man and a woman fall in love, the the man puts his penis in the woman's vagina. It's called love-making, and it's part of being in love.

Token: ...And when the woman has four penises in her at the same time, then stands over the men and pees on them, is that part of being in love too? [no response] Five midgets, spanking a man... covered in Thousand Island dressing. Is that making love?

I want a porno like that.

What's your birthmonth playmate?
Ever wondered who was the playboy playmate in the month of your birth? I never did. But now I know. And you can too! Watch out kids, this one is not work friendly.

More Munich pictures
I've had access to Eli's digital pictures that he took while in Germany for a while now, but I finally put them up in their own gallery page. There are a bunch of nifty pictures in there -- I only included pictures that I thought would be of interest to others on the trip, so I didn't upload any of the pictures of his trips to Berlin and such.

Additionally I tried something new tonight, which was uploading using the Gallery Remote Java app. It was super-sweet. It made uploading much simpler and I was able to just drag and drop the necessary files and be done with it. No worries about whether I navigated away from a page by accident (which is easy to do with the gallery web upload interface). I dig it.

Ice Storm pictures
North Carolina (including Greensboro) got a nice little ice storm on wednesday night/thursday morning. It did all sorts of damage to trees and a third of campus lost power. Pretty crazy. I put some pictures I snapped real quick with the digital camera up on my Picture Gallery. Go ahead and check them out, they are kind of interesting.

Software Development
So I have a few things I'm looking at in the software development department. I'm currently working on projects for my Computer Graphics and Animation course (in OpenGL), a game I wrote for the palm (Tesserae) which hopefully will finally get a release and I want to begin really learning php mysql. The php/mysql project that I been thinking about in the back of my mind for a while involves building a wishlist app. Not unlike Amazon's, but more generalized to the rest of the web. It would be nice to be able to offer people an interface to what I would like to get as presents (or donations) without spending too much time maintaining it and such. I wish there was something allready out there that did this. There seem to be a few projects out there already, but I would maybe like to do this just on my own. Oh and this wasn't enough I want to play with PHPReactor too.

The Pill
After stumbling across a documentary, I got to thinking about the pill and found a super informative article about the timing of the pill. For quite a while now I have had some interest in the way that birth control works in it's different forms. As it turns out, there are a bunch of different methods and formulae used for birth control. I now know of 6 different sustainable hormonal birth control methods.
The Pill (Progesterone and Estrogen)
Mini Pill (Progesterone)
Lunelle (1-Month Shot) (Progesterone and Estrogen)
Depo-Provera (3-Month Shot) (Progesterone only)
Vaginal Ring (Progesterone and Estrogen)
The Patch (Progesterone and Estrogen)
All of these methods seem to be set around maintaining the 28 day cycle. It's quite an odd thing. As it turns out, the 28 day cycle for many women is quite arbitrary. Although purely anecdotal, a friend of mine was recommended by her doctor that while she was abroad in Africa for three months that she take the pill, but never allow herself to have a period, always skipping the 4 week and jumping into the next. It was mainly a hygeine issue. Wouldn't it seem that doing something like that (maybe only 6-8 weeks instead of her 14) wouldn't be out of the question and for women who experience pain associated with their periods. Seems like a smart answer to me. Just random stuff. That article was really informative for me. Read it youself.

Scrubs is a cool show.
I decided a while ago (last year sometime) that Scrubs was a cool show. While home on winter break I decided I wanted to see them all and so I downloaded them. I got them either from Kazaa or from IRC (mostly from #Scrubs-Central which was on Dal.net, but is now on Irc-Chat). After watching all of the episodes, I also stumbled across someone on IRC offering something which I have never seen anywhere else, all the songs which have been in Scrubs. I have found my way to some interesting songs which I would have otherwise never known about or forgotten. I wonder why networks like NBC don't provide information about songs occuring in the episodes in their Episode Guide. Epguides would totally do this if provided with the information. I also wonder why the reverse does not happen either. Why doesn't an obscure artist include a link on their webpage about how their music is being featured in a television show. Some would call it "free advertising", but I would just say that all publicity is good. If both parties did it, they would both benefit in the end. And since so many of these corporations are intertwined, I imagine much of this would come back nicely in the end. Adcritic was supersmart in the way that they handled this sort of thing -- every ad that had music in it, they had links to buying the albums on a site which they got a cut from.

While writing this entry I found a nice link to something on the web, a site dedicated to Scrubs with a nice music section. I just wish everyone would do this. I mean hell, they already have the information (they had to license it anyways) why not make that information publicly available. Geez. The internet never changed anything, 99% of it is the same shit which used to be in TVGuide. But hey, check out that song list, there are some cool songs in there. Oh and NBC did put out some of the songs on a nice little cd.

Something has gone wrong
I'm not sure how I feel about growing up. I feel like it may be the end of me as an individual. I used to be someone who people liked, and thought was an individual, now people forget me an move on to other things. Is it something that I did or is something I didn't do, or is just other people. This is something I have not thought about at all, but now just looking back on where I was 2 years ago I realize the way I interacted with people was different.

I knew that I would change over time, but I always imagined that I would be happy where I was. I'm not so sure I am happy about where I ended up. In the past I have 'just let things happen' to me. That got me pretty far in life and kept me reasonably sane along the way, but now I am not so sure that is the best way to run my life.

I'm not sure I would have considered any of this if I didn't have a trigger. Tonight that trigger was Toad the Wet Sproket - Something's Always Wrong. I began remembering the mindset I had when I started listening to them in junior high. It creeps me out when I find out how different the way I think is as opposed to what it was 7 years ago. 7 years. Jeez. I am old.

Maybe I want to change something.

SLC Punk
Salt Lake City. It's an evil place. Gabe can confirm it. SLC is a truly evil place. SLC Punk is a cool ass movie. Highly recommended. It's cam's favorite. Not mine, but still cool.

You never know how much you love something until it's gone
People joke about me having an addiction to my laptop. Not an addiction per-se, but that I couldn't go with out it for an extended period of time. I always used to counter with the fact that I spent a semester in Germany in which I had almost no internet access and often went 3-4days without checking my email or going on the computer. Of course, that was a different place, a different time, with different people.

I feel as if I've had something taken away from me (my right arm perhaps) because I can't use my laptop anymore. The power brick I had on my IBM Thinkpad T21 finally kicked the bucket. Not kinda not work, fiddle to get it work, but BROKEN. So here I am, on a Friday afternoon trying to complete my homework due at 5pm with a computer that has rapidly decreasing battery life. I was able to move over everything I needed to a network share space and so I can technically get everything else done (from the Labs or from someone else's computer), but it isn't the same. Needless to say, there is another adapter on it's way.

It's funny, I wouldn't actually mind the lack of an AIM/ICQ client in my room, or the fact that I can't check things on the web, the largest thing that is bothering me is something I never was forced to go without, even in Germany (except while travelling), which is something in the late evening to chill me out. With my roommate being his anti-social self (his TV faces his desk, so that I can't see it...he has no friends...he never leaves the room except class and meals...he goes to bed at 11:00-11:30pm every night...etc) every night when I come in the lights are off in the room and he is asleep. I have gotten in the habbit of chilling-out listening to music, watching a cartoon (Family Guy anyone?) or more recently just blogging. You will notice that most of my previous entries occur between midnight and 4am. The time I spend on the computer just doing nothing. I want my laptop back.

IE was the cause of the crash of IE
I was using Internet Explorer, and guess what, it crashed. So I did the whole error reporting thing and it said it had a solution (this has worked for me once before...somehow some of my dlls were out of sync and it give me a page to fix it) but this time it offered me a little more insight into how Microsoft works, and I quote: "Thank you for submitting an error report. The Online Crash Analysis service has processed and analyzed this report and has determined that this crash event was likely caused by: Internet Explorer". They can't tell me why it crashed, what module crashed it, how to reproduce (or avoid) the problem in the future, in fact subtly make the statement they have no idea why it crashed, they just say: "This update may not fix the error you reported, but Microsoft recommends that you upgrade to the latest version for increased reliability." Now let's be serious now folks, I thought Bill Gates saying software bugs weren't a problem was a little funky, but why would they suggest I go to a new version if it different fix any bugs. Grrr. Here's a screenshot.

Cold Shower
There is nothing like a cold shower to start your day off on the wrong foot. As if being sick with a head cold wasn't enough (the quantity of tissues I've used is just insane.) I think there is a very good possibility that when the soul is hurt and weak your body becomes a mirror of this.

I did stay up late last night, mostly tweaking this software. It seems that it is mighty extensible. Everything can be done with a plugin (I haven't seen much that can't be) or by just modifying the template or skin.

So I kinda like nucleus
I dig it. I have moved over all of my old entries to here. (By hand) They also have the correct time/date stamps as before. I also had to edit some of them a little for formatting. I also like the option of being able to post things which are in the future. This means that they will not appear until that time has come about. So I could setup holiday/event related things to post before that time. That's slick. We'll see how this goes, it certainly seems quicker to me.

New webloging software?
So I've installed new software. This time it is Nucleus. The only one of the blogging software packages (I was looking at) that was:
Free - (Open license)
Written in php
Database backed
Allowed Comments
Not slow as shit
Hell, maybe I will even like it.

blogging software sucks
So I've decided that blogging software sucks. You have to make some choices in life, and often it is the lesser of two evils. Or in this case the lesser of many evils. The world is one compromise after another. So here are the things I've looked at so far (and can remember):

b2 - What I am using currently. I am happy, but it is slow as shit. (2.5 seconds for a page render, wtf?)
Blogger.com - Recently bought by google. Cool. Either pay-for-use or requires ftp (which I won't open up).
Movable Type - Non-Free.
Big Blog Tool - No hosting on my own box.
LiveJournal - No hosting on my own box.
BlogWorks XML - ASP only. (Like I would run IIS...
Blogalia - Not in English. Sorry.
Nucleus - Seemed ok. Might investigate further.
Grey Matter - Flat files, no database.
Drupal - Would work, but is overkill. It's like installing a water fountain in your house cause you want a sip of water.
So well then. That leaves me kind of stuck. I guess I should investigate Nucleus more, but I'm just amazed that even though blogger.com has a million users, there aren't any really good blogging packages out there to suit my needs. I want simple blogging, editing, clean css layout, rss feeeds, database backend and some scalability. It is a dream of mine to get slashdotted...

Upside down maps
Recently, I've been taking a course about maps and images of the earth. Much of it so far has been dealing with projections and distortions of maps. How different maps have different purposed, and how contrary to popular belief the mercator projection was not created to suppress those living in the third world (or make greenland big) it was created for navigation. Which as it turns out, it is a pretty good tool for. But I stumbled across this nifty site, Upside Down Maps which has some info about some maps presented in a form which is very abnormal for most people. I have to look at them for a second to reorient myself. It's kind of cool to warp your brain like that.

Brick
Brick by Ben Folds Five (off their second album) is one of the greatest songs ever written. Period. Any time I really listen to it I realize the song has so much emotion in it, I can't help by cry. Drowning slowly. I never wish such things upon anyone. Ever. I will defernd the right to have an abortion until the day I die, but I will also lose my mind anytime I try to think about the countless number of people who go through shit year after year. I don't know much else what to say. Read the lyrics and listen to the song again.

Browsing logs...
So I was browsing through my logs, seeing who has hit my site since I put it the other day. I have received quite a number of search engine hits using different bots, but one caught my eye. "Obidos-bot (just looking for books)". I was definately not your normal search engine, but after a little googling, I came across an explanation. It turns out there is a site out there which keeps track of the most mentioned books (by way of amazon links) on blogs. It's called Weblog Bookwatch. Although it seems like no one is posting links to amazon in their weblogs (the #10 slot had only 5 links), it's still a cool idea. Recently I have been quite impressed with Amazon's recommendations for me. Yesterday it recommended me Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Nora Jones' Come Away with Me. Both albums that I want to buy and just haven't gotten around to dropping the loot for them. It's funny because amazon has gathered enough information about me that about 2/3 of their recommendations are CDs that I already have (but didn't buy through them - example: Jamiroquai's Synkronized.) Damn their good. There is a nifty paper I stumbled across about it, but I doubt I will ever care enough to spend time trying to understand it.

Restaurant
So, while sitting in California Pizza Kitchen in Durham today, I realized something, I want to start a restaurant. I had been chatting with some friends about how we were going to keep ourselves from working for the man and how we should start up a company. Over the years I have met so many talented and smart people in different areas, who were hard workers. Some of them had little things that held them back (no high school diploma, no practical work experience, medical problems, etc) but if given a chance would work very hard. So I decided I needed to start up a company that would allow me to hire these people and get to work with my friends. So we are going to open a pub. We decided there is a severe lack of English pub atmosphere in the states. So we are going to open something that has excellent beer (Fuller's 1845, Young's Double Chocolate Stout, of course Guinness and my personal favorite Paulaner Original Münchener Dunkel). High quality, home style food is a must. It should be a place where you can just come and spend hours doing nothing except having a beer and a dinner which is nothing gourmet, just solid good food. There should be no television there, no cell phones and such things. You should come to have good time with your friends, talking and having a good time. Not staring at a game like you could at any sports bar or at your nearest friend with DirectTV and big ass TV. Essentially, I would dream of having something like The Victoria in London or Packard's in Northampton, MA.

To let the geek in me out, I would like to design the ordering/cash register system myself, entirely from scratch. We could use cheap Compaq iPaqs with PC card sleeves and 802.11b wireless. We'd have that local pub feel, but order accuracy to keep things right. That system might also be an oppertunity to generate some seed money as it could be developed and sold prior to the restaurant opening. And most certainly after. The geek in me is overwhelming at times.

Mozilla and Phoenix adult contemporarys my world
So there is this issue in Phoenix 0.5 where form submission is buggy. Like when I go to post these blog entries it posts them ok, but then doesn't redirect me to the other page afterwards. This also has some interesting side effects, like that amazon searching/wishlisting doesn't work. At all. That would bug me -- as I am trying to use Phoenix as my primary browser. So I downloaded a new nightly built and it fixed the problem. Yeah. But now the google toolbar breaks. Fuck.

Relationships
I've realized that the complications associated with friendships and relationships is something which is more invasive than most of us would like to admit. The building of relationships (both friendly and intimate) is work. Great people don't just fall out of the sky to let you know they are there. They certainly don't want walk up to you in a bar and hit on you. Maybe you meet them at work, maybe you somehow find someone with similar interests online...but most likely they are just there or they aren't. When you find someone who you think might be worth the time, I would say, don't follow some online guide. Instead just try some common sense. It's funny, for all the countless guides to dating out there (actually amazon has 1635.) Someone needs to point out to people that just being honest usually gets you pretty far in life. Not just being kinda honest, or when it makes you feel better. Hell, for me it's kind of like an addictive cycle -- everytime I'm honest, I want to do it more. (Like sex...but different.)

Mozilla rocks my world
I've been running Phoenix as my primary browser for the last few days. I really am amazed at how mature Mozilla has become in the last few years. From the mess that was Netscape 4.6 developers were able to create a world-class browser. It blows my mind. But anyways, for those who don't know, Phoenix is just Mozilla stripped down to the pure browser components (no AOL IM sidebar and such). One of the things that was constantly bothering me was the lack of the Google Toolbar. There has been no other browser "add-on" that I have ever wanted and activately downloaded when I use a new computer. Any web browser without it feels naked to me. It's not the search from bar capabilites to interest me so much, those were available with stock phoenix with the search box, but the other cool buttons. First of all, the highlight functionality is a godsend. You can highlight the searched terms on the page you are viewing. And the individual keywords which when clicked on, jump you to the next instance of that term in the page. All of these make browsing/searching many times faster. I like it a lot. A now I get it for Mozilla/Phoenix too. Yum. (Get the Mozilla Google Toolbar for yourself.

High Fidelity
Every once in a while, more like every other day, I think about the movie High Fidelity. It's one of the few movies I've actually gone out and bought rather than just downloading. Even though I actually did download it first (first an SMR telesync, then a clean dvd rip) I still bought it because I knew it was a good movie and worth keeping around. Where as most of the movies I download are trash. (The beautiful widescreen screener of Reindeer Games I downloaded didn't make the movie not suck ass.)

But anyways, I've keep feeling like the High Fidelity move of calling up all your old girlfriends to come to terms with your current situation might be quite useful for me. There are some people I want to actually become friends with again, others not so much...but I want to see where they all are now. Especially now as everyone else (not me) is graduating come May. I just don't think I have the courage to actually make those phone calls and track people down. Especially cause I would imagine most of them would be super-creeped out by it. (Hell, I would be pretty creeped out if one of them were to call me tommorow! I still want to do it though. I just need Bruce Springstein to come into my room egging me on...then I will do it. Not until then.

GTA Vice City
GTA Vice City is a really fun game. Almost as fun as the original GTA3 was when we first got it. But I was listening to one of the radio stations and it was quite amusing, I heard a cameo by Emmanuel Goldstein (Eric Corley) of 2600 fame, on one of the radio call in shows. He identified himself as that guy who talks on the radio about technology. (Nice reference to Off the Hook, the radio show he has on Tuesday nights on WBAI in New York that he hosts.) He than rants on about how technology will take us all over, and obviously there will be robots in the future. He even makes the quote that he is a robot. Too funny. What a great game. Too bad I couldn't find any information on the web about who made cameo appearences in the game. Find any? Post em below.

OpenGL, GLUT and S3 suckyness
Today I was introduced how much S3 sucks balls. Actually, that's a lie. I knew a while ago. It just happens that today Its Been Confirmed. While programming for my OpenGL/Computer Graphics class today, I ran into a small little problem. That being when I execute the program, the main glut window never spawned. After some detective work, I found that as soon as GlutCreateWindow was called, my program never responded again. No ammount of recompiling/debugging would stop it. It just sucked. So I restarted. And everything worked. I figured it was a fluke, but then 10mins later, randomly (it seems) it stopped working again. Apparently my video card gets "stuck" in a bad mode (I think) and forces me to shutdown/restart to get it working again.

I wonder if this is related to the other two problems I've been having with my laptop. Initially the fact that the newer drivers available on IBM's and S3's websites are very unstable and downright unusable makes me mad, but the fact that I have to load those drivers off a CD because when I called IBM, they couldn't find a copy of the drivers to email me. WTF? What kind of QA is this? How do you let drivers that are unstable enough to crash during any sustained video playback out the door. Geez. If I hadn't been using the old drivers before, I would have just assumed the laptop sucked. Old drivers -- stable as a mofo, new -- can't even run for 2 hours without crashing.

So when my professor suggested I upgrade my video drivers to attempt to fix the problem, I knew that was completely out of the question. So here I am, every once in a while, always when I am in the middle of debugging, I have to put her to sleep and wake her back up (much faster than restarting). That seems to fix the problem. Eh, whatever.

Wireless cards
I need to buy a wireless card. Actually, I guess when it comes down to it, I don't need a wireless card, but I really want one. My friend Amy has been nice enough to lend me her wireless card because she doesn't really like her laptop doesn't use it very much. I on the other hand, well, I don't go very long without it. The card she lent me, and I've been using, is a Linksys WPC11. Not version 2.5 or version 3.0. The original Instant Wireless card from them. It sucks.

I've been using the FreeNetworks Receive Sensitivity page a somewhat of a bible recently. (And cause it's Wiki, I can even edit it to fix errors.) But anyways, according this page, the difference between the WMPC11 v1 card and a Cisco 352 card is 9dB @ 11mbit (cisco card is eight times more sensitive!) and it gets even more pronounced as you get down to 1mbit. 14dB. 14dB. That means the Cisco card needs 1/32 the signal strength than my card does. So next time when I loose my association to our access point because I put my hand in the way, I will remember that often times you get what you pay for.

The cisco card though is a bit expensive ($60-$100 on ebay). I instead starting looking at the Lucent/Orinoco/Agere adapters. They are much cheaper ($30-$50 on ebay) and additionally they have a cool external antenna connector. This is better than the cisco, which if you want an external antenna will have to buy a different model card (AIR-LMC-352 instead of AIR-PMC352) and those go for $50 more than the normal cards. ouch.

So I decided to go with the lucent card, either the Silver (40Bit WEP) or the Gold (128Bit WEP) would be fine, ideally I would like the gold card, just in case I ever go somewhere using WEP. I also wouldn't mind if I used a rebranded OEM card instead of a Orinoco branded one. The Dell TrueMobile 1150, Compaq WL-110 and IBM High Rate Wireless Card all would work nicely. Of course, there is a part of me that wants to buy the IBM card so it matches my laptop. (Am I a dork/geek for that?)

The difference between the cisco card and the lucent cards is small at 11mbit (3dB) and they equals at the 1mbit and 2mbit speed. (Which is where you really card about sensitivity - because if 1mbit doesn't work, you don't get anything.)

No one will ever read this site
Since no one will ever read this site, I've decided to have sort of a combination rant/livejournal/news items site. I would imagine no one will like it and that's ok. Maybe somebody will follow some good links I've put up here and learn something new or stumble onto a site which they might never have found otherwise.

They're giving away free money!
Did you purchase any music from a retailer between January 1, 1995 and December 22, 2000?

Somebody owes you some money. Five to twenty bucks isn't so bad, certainly when all you have to do is fill out a form to qualify. Stolen from JeffDiaz.com.