last updated: Saturday, 01-Jan-2005 15:43:41 EST
12/24/04, 12:12am-
Before I hit the sack, I need to blog a little. Things have been a little crazy lately. Work may be taking over my life again, although I really really really hope it doesn't do that until after the 1st of the year, because I need a vacation like nobody's business. Burnout is only days away. Here at home, the AC-9 project has been kickign my ass 6 ways from Sunday. I thought I was a good engineer, but man oh man is this tough. Right now it's looking like there will be parts fabrication in my future, but I sure hope not. I don't need to spend that kind of money on a train right now. On the positive list, I had fake-xmas with Julie last week, and that was just tons of fun. Tuesday was lunch-with-Beth day, and we did the gift thing too, while being goofy over food at Bennigans. Yesterdat (the 22nd by my clock) was a meeting with some bigwigs at work, and I think I kicked major tail there. I was eloquent, accurate, and convincing. I think I even managed to be professional in my jeans and sweater. \m/ Next stop: Christmas. Wish me luck on getting my holiday spirit up to the requisite level in time. I only have 23 hours and 42 minutes to go.
12/19/04, 9:58am-
Work has ben hectic. Home has been fun. The trains are up for their annual December run, and there are a few new additions [AC-9, yard, Lark]. Hooray for trains :-)
It looks as though I will indeed be working the 20-23rd, but since I'll be off the 24th to the 2nd, I'm not really complaining. Anything more than 3 consecutive days off in a row is awesome.
12/7/04, 4:33pm-
Mad phat propz to KP, for bein' 19 and oh so very cool. Rock on sis.
I'm off to NYC, again, to save the world, or at least a client. Short notice travel is wonderful. Really. Just ask my credit card company!
Anyway...I've fallen in love with articulated locomotoves lately. The big ones from Athearn and Trix are of course unobtanium because of their cost, but Model Power recently picked up Manuta's old tooling and inventory, and they've started reintroducing the old stuff with upgrades at low prices, like the 2-6-6-2 logging Mallet (pic) that comes undecorated. Wouldn't that be just perfect for detailing and a little paint? I think so too. If only it cost a little less....oh...wait...Trainworld has them (345001). For $85. Yippie!
12/3/04, 9:39pm-
This update is for KP, because she says my blogs aren't happy, so this one will make up for any less than thrillingly joyful stuff I may have written. Ever ;-)
Kitten
Bunny
Puppy
Meadow
River
Sunset
11/30/04, 6:50pm-
Wing Commander is on. It's a movie so awful I love it. Sophomoric performances by Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr, and suprisingly passable supporting work by Tcheky Karyo and Saffron Burrows. Very 1996. Wonderful stuff.
11/29/04, 8:34pm-
Stolen link from Christine who stole it from LJ that explains everything.
My list of 10 things I want:
1. A cool logo for my ultra indie anti-band, naked cake!. Difficulty: no pr0ns.
2. A melody for one of the many songs I've written that lack everything but lyrics.
3. Peace. Not world, or even national, those are bigger than I have any right to. Justa little bit for me.
4. A trendy sweater. I have a few that I adore, but not enough to express my affection for them throughout a week.
5. A new computer desk. Mine is falling apart.
6. Something cool.
7. A vacation to somewhere warm.
8. A career I love, instead of a job I do.
9. A house. The reasons are obvious.
10. A girlfriend, because the holidays are just better when you have someone to love.
11/28/04, 11:21am-
Is it bad when your last stalk of lucky bamboo dies?
11/24/04, 6:50pm-
I shoveled the driveway tonight. I think it was lead that wa falling, not wet snow. Seriously. I moved a goddamn TON of that crap. It was fun. Yay.
I think I'd also like to take a road trip. To Newport, OR. From Boston. On US20. The whole way. Yeah. That'd be cool. About 3300mi of cool. I'd need a new driver's seat, and maybe an upgraded stereo. I dunno.
11/22/04, 8:47pm-
That last one was for Christine. Now she can blog again. Yay. We now return you to your regularly scheduled mayhem.
11/22/04, 8:09pm-
Does anyone else find it blindingly annoying when Bono starts Vertigo with "One, Two, Three, Fourteen!" in Spanish? It can't only be me....can it?
It's been a whole week since I blogged. Wow. Quick version: Work, work, work, work, work, sleep, sleep, sleep, concert. Tokunaga-san was a very nice man, and he and I had a very nice chat about his piece (Clarinatissimo!) which was premiered at said concert. I randomly sat down behind him. Go figure. Dee needs an oil change, which I hope to complete over the extended weekend.
Oooohh...it looks like Ben Heckendorn did a PS2 portable before Sony! His portable hacks kick ass. I wish I was as cool as Ben.
OK, time for more food. I'm hungry again. How can that be? Then I think my PS2 and I have an appointment to kick ass and take names in Jak and Daxter. That game p\/\/nZ me.
11/14/04, 8:26pm-
I found a new place I need t-shirts from.
11/14/04, 11:19am-
Aparently, this is indeed my lucky week(end). The gloves which disappeared oh so mysteriously yesterday were replaced today by the foresight of my mom's purchasing habits. How cool is that. Yay for gloves.
There will be cleaning and car work today, hopefully in the garage, since its cold.
Oh yeah, aparently I won a mic at the SBT expo on Wednesday. There will be a shiny new D4 on the way with my name engraved on it in the near future. Hooray for a bass cabinet mic! Yay!
11/14/04, 1:59am-
The evening downtown, including Navy Pier and Adler Planet-arium, was great. A good time was had by all. I lost my favorite gloves at the Itasca train station tho. Grr. On the upside, Joe's was good, and Sonic Vision was really cool. Oh, and I finally figured out the game they put up before the show starts. Yay! Not having a cab stand at Adler = longish coldish walk to the Field Museum. Pictures:
self portrait, skyline.
11/7/04, 12:34pm-
This weekend was actually fun. Yay. KP was in town for the weekend, and much fun was had by all. The MooV was amazing in aa way that defies language. The show rocked my socks so hard my feet hurt. greg's Bad Religion birthday was fun too. 23 years! I got some toys to help advance my geekdom. The Herald did a nice piece on winners and losers in the recent election courtest of the AP. The new Green Day album is -tacular in serveral different dimensions, both obvious (rawk, politics) and not (relax, bass, think). I recommend it highly to everyone with an active braincell and a pulse. I'm also messing around a little with my Speedmerchant Rev3, because it's been a while and because it's fun. I want to make it zoom, and with a little work yesterday and today, I think that'll happen. Now, if I can manage to kep my weekends this much fun for an extended period, I might just be able to cure the general state of malaise induced by the all-work-and-no-play lifestyle I've had for the last 2 months. Let's hear it for being active!
11/3/04, 5:41pm-
As Emma so eloquently noted, things are not good. My biggest gripes? The 16% of registered Democrast that voted for W, and the obscenely small number of 18-29 citizens that DIDN'T VOTE. What were you guys thinking? Were you thinking? Do you really want to live in the police state that every Russian immigrant cabbie from here to NYC can see coming? In case you dind't get the gist, I'm quite incensed about this. Check that. I'm really fucking pissed off. There's nothing that kept you from walking your butt to city hall and registering, or doing it online like so many states offered this year. The vast majority of you weren't chained to your bed or locked in your room for the last 3 months. It would have been very very easy for y'all to have made the difference in this election between electing the idiot son of an asshole and doing something to fix the problems we've got, like an out of control defecit, radical trade imbalances, worldwide resentment because we exist, and a tax code so out of whack that someone like me with a college degree and some very advanced mathematics gets a headache trying to do his taxes. To all the people who didn't vote for Kerry who could have? I hope you realize what you've sentenced us to for the next 4 years. It's going to take decades to undo this mess.
10/23/04, 11:22am-
I finally got a haircut today, after two months of growing a mop. It's nice to feel well groomed again. The reason I didn't do it earlier? That NYC trip mentioned last week. Blog still TBA. It's written, just not integrated yet.
I'm also, once again, stuck with no available credit on my favorite card, due mainly to a lack of a company credit card. This is the 3rd time in 4 months, and is once again causing me a real problem. I had plans to buy and do some things this weekend, and of course I can't, because the majority of my plastic worth is tied up in company expenses. Grr. It doesn't help that the expense reimbursement system is stuck in the 50s.
There are a couple of interesting homes on the market around here. Investigation will be required. Your dog wants it's own house.
Oh, and while my box is noww all superdriveariffic and all, it still has a distinct lack of horsepower when it comes to iApps. Despite my Radeons and RAM and hundreds fo gigs of HD space, I'm saddled with a 100Mhz system bus and a lame 4.5x multiplier. Oh for the love of a dual G5...
That's it for now. Back to your regularly scheduled mayhem.
10/16/04, 6:12pm-
I'm back from NYC for the second time, and the blog from the trip will be posted when I get off my tail and move the files from the iBook to Wintermute2. After 19 days on, I'm taking 3 off, which means I'm staying home on Monday to relax a little bit.
10/6/04, 6:45pm-
A deal like this is too god to pass up, so I didn't. My computer will be all superdriveariffic early next week, when I get back from NYC, again.
Again? Yup. I was in the city last weekend, I left on Friday and came back on Sunday, for the comissioning of the Barco LED display in the lobby of the DSW/Filene's Basement there. This weekend, I get to go back with Chris to comissiont he video system, including the installation of the rack I spent all day crating. I'd love to say that my job is amazingly fun and entertaining right now, but these weekends really blow. In the end I'll have worked 19 days straight. I know that'd not much compared to some, but for a 9-5er like me, it's not so hot.
9/26/04, 6:03pm-
Ohh. A chronological anagram. How about that.
Anyway...
In an effort to keep my geek quotient at a sufficiently high level, I'm delving headfirst back into microcontroller programming, and dusting off my old Stamps and PICs and AVRs. The K&R book is at hand, and chips and references of all kinds are scattered upon my (already too messy) desk. First off is an investigation into the wonderful world of 1-Wire¨ networking, courtest of the samples department of Dallas Semi, now a part of Maxim. Of course, my Thinkpad has also been excavated from it's dusty resting place and once again shines it's happy teal light upon my face from where it sits, just to my left. I ordered a new USBoE to make life with my Macs a little easier, primarally with respect to MacBS2. Murat has done amazing work in the short time MacBS2 has been out. It should be fun. My preamp needs an update.
9/24/04, 3:06pm-
I feel so old right now.
9/20/04, 9:57pm-
BASTARDS!
The SOBs who write for CSI Miami killed one of the two characters I watched it for. Dammit! Why'd they have to kill Lucas? I mean, really. It was all OK in the end...
9/20/04, 9:10pm-
It can now be truthfully reported that my car has a full compliment of sizzle, hiss, honk, wham, whump, thwack, boom, thud and most importantly thump. So much so in fact that a second trip inside the wiley ways of my stereo will be required to tame the thud, which is rather overpowering to the rest of the spectrum.
9/19/04, 9:05pm-
After my success with ATA RAID, I think I really want to do something special when I get around to buying a G5. Aparently, the hottest of hot tickets is a Highpoint RocketRaid 1820A (@ $205) controlling an octet of Maxtor maxLine III 300GB SATA drives (@ $235/ea) residing in an 8 slot enclosure (@ $170) with DriveCoolers (@ $29) and 8 cables (@ $8/ea), for a grandish total of ~2TB of RAID 5 at a paltry cost of $2551 plus shipping and tax. That would be amazing if you ask me. Add it to the $5000 cost of the new G5 I want, and I could buy my car all over again, with fewer dents.
Hmmm. Maybe after I win the lottery. Of course, starting with only 2 drives will drop the cost a large amount. We'll see.
9/6/04, 6:43pm-
Well, making the SIIG CN2491 (Mac OS dual channel ATA133/RAID card) into an ACARD A6880M, complete with raid 0, 1, and 0+1 is as simple as doing a firmware flash. Make sure you do the right thing and detatch all your drives beforehand tho, since if you don't you'll be caught in a nearly infinite hell of reboots, blank screens, dissk searches, and waiting. As of now tho, I have a card that's waiting eagerly for either another WD 2000JB or another Maxtor 6Y200P0 and a mirrored array. Yum. Disk arrays.
9/5/04, 1:51pm-
KP is home this weekend, which is awesome. We chatted last night until the wee hours of the morning, reviving absurd inside jokes like the bridge to Europe made out of phat beatz and paved exclusively with thick rhymes. Those rhymes being, preferrably, of the variety so publically announced by Front himself ("Drop rhymes so thick that they take up space")
The purpose of this entry is to chronicle the weekend, mainly the beauty that is freshly, and correctly, applied molding in the entryway and the kitchen. It required the acquisition of a new CMS, which dad was more than willing to do, because, after all, he appreciates the joy of a good tool as much as I do. How could he not? He's the one who taught me how.
It's also a random rumination on equipment, photo backkpacks to be exact. Just over a year ago I blogged about the fine way in which my Domke Iguana fit me, and that remains true today, within limits that have become as obvious to me as the infinite cycle of day and night. You see, the Iguana, while form fitting and properly adjusted, is a mere 20" tall, from the bottom of the waist belt to the beginning of the shoulder straps. I am a tall person, and that's just not enough. According to my tape measure, and some random arm movements, my ideal pack should be between 23" and 26" from the waist belt to the shoulder strap in order to fit my lanky form. Thus, the guana must be relegated for trips under 2 hours, that lack both meduim or strenuous hiking as well as a heavily loaded pack. It's great for a half day's rations, a poncho, and a brick of film, but load it with all my gear, a tripod, poncho, film, camp seat, spares, filters galore, and a clean flannel, and it becomes a poorly balanced nightmare for hiking up a mountain. The straps are good, the waist belt fits wonderfully, but I'll be damned if it stays comfortable for more than an hour of real hiking, which is unfortunate. I have recently been looking at taller bags, hoping that I can find one whose mesurements and photo karma will positively influence my time as a pack mule for Nikkors. I've come across the large, but somewhat skinny, LowePro Pro Trekker AW II, which measures up at a befy 23.5" tall, and a svelte 14" wide in it's most minimal configuration, small enough it fits even Southwest's carryon requirements. Unfortunately, it's $320 plus shipping, which means it'll have to wait until my nest trip afield, along with the 600/4, Wimberly head, and G1327. I'm also looking at the Velocity 7 for a more lightweight system in the future, perhaps a body and a pair of lenses (28-70 AF-S, 70-200AF-S, 2x teleconverter). Hey, I said in the future. It could happen.
OK, enough dreaming. Time to get back to work. Work? Yup, it's a working vacation for me, which in reality is neither productive, nor relaxing. I'm in reverse-engineer mode today, and it's been so long I'm more than rusty. Hoprfully I can bash through it in time to save a bid, or at least our reputation.
8/29/04, 12:50pm-
My sister is now officially away at college, and before running off to do laudry, she sent me a picture of a truly magnificent lamp she purchased for her desk. Behold it's amazingness.
Also, I'm back from Jackson. and that blog, along with many other laptop'd blogs, will be posted in the near future, as I get them HTMLified and gather an index of things of that sort.
8/12/04,10:37pm-
I'm back from Florida. The blog will be up eventually. Tomorrow is a work day and I'm off to WY on Saturday morning. More blogging when I return.
8/1/04, 12:30am-
KP and I just rolled in from the last stop on the Coast to Coast Roast tour, with Suburban Legends, RX Bandits, Catch 22, LBC, and headlined by none other than RBF, who made the night by playing Take On Me, Beer and Sell Out back to back to back to end their set. It rawkskax0red my s0x0rz. Post concert food was provided, like always, by Dennys. It's been a while since I went to the Congress to see a show, and I realize now that I've missed it terribly, with it's great sightlines, relatively comfortable seating, and easy access to both the pit and a chair to sit on when one is all pitted out. Yay.
The week leading up to the end of the month of July was hell. Tuesday I had an 8am meeting in Rochelle, which was a good hour and a half away, necessitating an earlier than normal wakeup. Wednesday I was in Manhatten for a brunch meeting, sans food, which involved waking up at 3:30am, and after my return to the office that afternoon, I worked until almost 11pm. Most evil hours. Then there was the 7am call at my local Lifetime on Friday morning, followed by a day of doing 5 jobs at once. Needless to say I was pretty fried from the week and pretty stoked about the weekend. Today (still Saturday by my clock..I haven't gone to bed yet) I made the 3rd incarnation of a fiberglass tub to fill in that empty space between the spare and the jack in my car, and met with more success than the previous attempts. Hopefully this will give my vintage A/D/S amp a place to live. More glassing tomorrow and hopefully the mounting of the MTX amp for my weak little 10" sub. Yay for boom and thud in Dee. Speaking of Dee, she got a new set of shoes on Friday. Same as the old ones, but with tread and without holes.
7/24/04, 9:58pm-
Hey kids, do you want to go to the movies?
Nooooooooooooo.
Do you want to go to the amusement park?
Nooooooooooooo.
Do you want to go to the punk rock show?
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
So began the mystical magical day that was the Warped Tour 2004. KP and I made the 57 mile drive to Tinley Park and commenced with 7 and a half hours of pure rock. We saw The Casualties. We saw New Found Glory. We saw The Vandals. We saw Motion City Soundtrack. We saw Split Habit. We saw Taking Back Sunday. We saw Bad Religion. We saw NOFX. We rocked in the truest sense of the word. I was happy to sing along with BR (Infected, 21st Century Digital Boy, Sorrow, American Jesus, etc) and NOFX, and pester KP endlessly with "I'm on fiiiiiiiiire...." both before and after MCS. We caught the last few songs by TBS before NOFX, including a mutual favorite, "Cute Without the E", which was sun along to loudly and somewhat melodiously. The day was so amazing, the loss of my last-one-available Vandals shirt didn't completely ruin my day like I thought it would. Split Habit's cover of "Man Eater" drew us from our aimless wandering over to the Ernie Ball Local Heroes stage and the rediscovery of a prominant band in the local scene doing a killer cover of a great old tune.I managed to score both a NOFX and a Fat Wreck shirt, whose dubious sizing will only be verified after a proper washing. Methinks the sub-M sized NOFX shirt will be a cold water only item, while the L sized FWC will be a regular one. We'll see. Not only that, but I managed to not f-up the directions coming home, and we made it without any issue what so ever. Post-concert(s) festivities were at Lou's, and it was good.
7/16/04, 11:07pm-
I don't know what's worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
I don't know why I instigate
And say what I don't mean
I don't know how I got this way
I know it's not alright
So I'm breaking the habit
I'm breaking the habit tonight
6/30/04, 7:42pm-
My blog from the weekend in MD will be up later. For now, I think I've licked the spam problem I'm having. Pair was kind enough to create a fabulously easy to use GUI for sendmail recipes. Unfortunately, I was oblivious enough to not see it for a year. Adding a few DISCARD @domain rules shoudl quickly bounce about 90% of the spam I get. Woohoo!
Update, 10:04pm-
Holy forking schmidt this is amazing. The reduction of spam is stratospheric, supersonic, perhaps even intergalactic. I am at a loss. In the last 2 hours I've gotten precisely 7 pieces of spam. Why I didn't figure this whole thing out before is quite beyond me, but it's effectiveness is making my inner geek feel warm and fuzzy with success, almost too much for comfort. I'm happy.
6/19/04, 10:29am-
HP has a new 23" monitor out, and it's supposed to be amazing. It uses the newest series of LG LCDs, and from what I've seen and heard at work, LG is currently the king of supa-badass LCD panels. The specs say it whups Apple's 23" offering. I'm really looking forward to finding out how well it handles color balance. The less I have to cal it, the happier I'd be, assuming it really does have blacker blacks and whiter whites and more linear RGB than the big brother to the one I'm currently viewing this on.
6/14/04, 11:44pm-
There was a concert last night. Those nice boys from Blink played the living hell out of their songs, and seemed more mature than I can remember. It was truly amazing. Probably the best Blink show I've ever seen or heard about. Before Blink came out, No Doubt fooking rawked me into the next county, I swear. Some observations:
In short: Best. Show. Everrrrrr.
After the show, we got a little lost, got a little found, then made our way to the local Denny's, only to be confounded on our quest for food by a power outage and a flaky generator. Then we went on to the other Denny's, where we were waited on slowly but surely, and then finally to bed around 2am.
For those of you playing along, that means I've gotten about 4:15 of sleep in the last 42 hours. That means I'm hella tired. Bedtime.
6/12/04, 10:29pm-
One more hting before I head to bed. While KP and I were out killing time tonight (Ikea, Cinnabon, Hollister, Hot Topic, etc) I found what will one day reside pretty much everywhere I need seating in the domocile I have yet to purchase: Laholm. Best. Seating. Ever. It's TEh ROCK!!11!one!!
6/12/04, 4:32pm-
Last night was Riddick with KP. The movie was by no means a cinematic tour de force, but the action was good, the editing polite, and the cinematography well choreagraphed. The only part that fell down was the actual story, but honestly, I didn't expect much after the relative superficiality of Pitch Black, so it was exactly what I thought I'd get. Overall it was quite enjoyable, and I'll likely own the box set of the pair when it comes out. Yay for me.
After the movie, KP and I walked back to the car to find a note from J&B. ("We parked two spaces away! \n come to Steak N Shake! \n B & J"). Also found was a message on my phone which was something to the effect of "There are two hot girls waiting for you at Steak N Shake!"
Heeding the instructions of both communications, we hustled ourselves to SNS to find the aforementioned hot girls (who were, quite expectedly, J & B). Shakes and stuff were had by all , and after the usual good times (ugly noise in a can!), KP and I drove B home. J called shortly after my arrival at Che Paton to let me know that the Saga of the Wet Basement is still unfinished, but in a relatiely minor way.
dave <3 friends
More squeakers for work have been constructed, and are in the final stages of cosmetic finishing. That's a good thing, because Blink and No Doubt have a date with myself and KP tomorrow, and I'll be too busy with Rock Concert Movement No. 3 (The Up-and-Down Jumping Motion) to work on them much at all.
6/6/04, 11:11pm-
Holy forking schmidt. My sister graduated from high school today. Not only that, but she delivered a really amazing commencement speech. You really ought to go read it like good visitors. You know, the ones who click on every link? yeah.
After commencement madness, we went to dinner at the Millrose, where the food was good and the dessert (Key Lime Pie) was better.
After dinner, KP and I decided to see a movie, and since Riddick isn't coming out until next weekend, we hit the Googolplex for a shoing of the new Harry Potter MooV (her second, my first). Yeah, it really was that good. There were 2 overly dramatic moments, but really, I didn't mind one bit.
Once we got back, I came to sit at the computer and blog about my experiences, but a mosquito was annoying me by not biting, but instead buzzing around me like some kind of.....er....um....mosquito? This is the part where I tell you how bad I am at catching and killing those annoying little critters. Really, I think I've probably gotten 4 or 5 in my entire life. They're just to wily. Well, this time I got one. And boy, did I get him good. Yeah.
Adam Duritz has been blogging for a while now, but I usually don't keep up with it very well. He put one up recently that I think everyone who hates shitty over-produced pop princesses should read. *cough*jessica*cough*clay*cough* It's about Mandy Moore's cover album Coverage. Excerpt:
My name is Mandy. I am a good actress, I am a damn good singer, I have a killer record collection, a real heart, and these are all the songs that make it full. I will now sing the shit out of them for you.
Before I sign off, I wanted to mention that the weather here has been rather evil.
OK, g'night.
6/5/04, 12:22pm-
It's official. Spam has taken over my inbox. Thanks to the brilliant people over at SpamSieve and the overwhelmingly prescient people at BareBones, my mail client interfaces seemlessly with a Bayesian filter to remove every single piece of that goddamn fucking pox that attempts to penetrate the sanctity of my inbox. I love it. The accuracy is astounding. I've actually been keeping a statistical log of the filter and it's accuracy. There have been 2 mistagged emails in the last 153,548 that I have received to date. That's 0.001302% Slightly more than one onethousandth of one percent. That's practically psychic, like Miss Cleo, but accurate. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the comparison corpus the filter pulls from is nearly one million messages. ONE MILLION. About 2% of those are legit. The rest are spam.
I get somewhere between 1000 and 5000 pieces of spam a day. If we split the difference, let's figure I average about 3000 pieces of spam a day. At an average of 1.7k/message, that's 4.98MB of spam a day, 34.86MB/week, making for a grand total of 1.77GB of spam every year. For the purpose of comparison, I get about 36MB of legit emails a year. That is a statistic I find wholly disgusting. So disgusting in fact, I am seriously contemplating creating an entirely new set of email addresses for myself and my various avatars.
I hate spam.
In other news, Julie's basement is now dry and happy, after several days of work to make it dry (shop vacing, carpet lifting, padding removal, sump pump monitoring, fretting, sweating, fan blowing, window opening, etc.). Last night was the celebration of sorts, at Damon's. The food was excellent, with well cooked chicken (me and Julie) and aparently scrumptious, albeit floppy, shrimp (Beth), and onions (in both loaf and straw form). We also ordered drinks. Margaritas (Beth and I) and a Cosmo (Julie), and found all were lacking. Well, actually the opposite ways tre, sicne they were mixed dangerously strong (the folks at Damon's might want to read those links). I took a sip of my Golden Margarita and nearly choked because it seemed as though I was drinking really cheap straight tequila. I am no stranger to the wiley ways of liquor, but there are a few varities which cause me no end of consternation. Straight Vodka and straight Tequila are on that list. You can imagine how well I reacted to my drink, especially since it was an expensive forking beverage nearly as large as my head. Jumping Jeebus it was awful. The food-making-peoples redeemed themselves with dessert, something I have forgotten the name of, and will hereafter referr to as "that heavenly oreo cheesecake thingy." It came with 3 forks, and we all dug in madly. Apparently, I wasn't eating my share, because a comment came from the other side of the table that I needed to consume more. My response, cited as the quote of the evening, was much funnier there than it would be if I included it here. Suffice it to say the evening, which was capped off with a viewing of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour DVD at ChŽ Julie, was so amazing my face still hurts. Friends like J & B really are the epitome of rock.
5/21/04, 1:53pm-
If you noticed that I'm blogging during work hours, you might be interested to know it's because I'm home sick. Of course, you might not be interested at all in the fact that this malady, although masquerading as strep, is in reality a reincarnation of the Black Death, Plague, or Yersinia pestis, depending on your scientific bent. Well, maybe not Plague, but it sure feels like hell. I've spent the last 3 days trying to pretend that there aren't thousands of shards of broken glass floating in concentrated lemon juice with a salt chaser in my throat every time I swallow. My pain reference for 10 is the amount it took to get me to the cusp of blacking out. This is about a 7.5. I would not wish this on anyone, especially my coworkers or my family. I have been steadily improving, but it's a matter of degrees (tenths actually, like 99.7 to 99.5), not wholesale improvement. My doctor says it's viral, and other than painkillers, there isn't a whole lot he can do, which is both 100% true and 100% disappointing, because dammit, I hurt, and I really can't afford to miss as much time at work as I already have. Last night my concurrent case of Cabin Fever grew to a new height, and commanded me to exit the cave I know as home and venture forth, if nothing else than to be in the sun and the wind for a little while. My travels took me around for a good hour in my climate controlled car, popping Halls and wincing whenever I swallowed. A five minute break at Best Buy netted me the new New Found Glory disc as well as an obscenely overpriced copy of Real Genius, which I gladly paid for, as my fever-addled brain didn't care as much as it should have. My return home was punctuated by high winds and a brutal rainstorm, which triggered flash flood (!) watches and sever thunderstorm warnings for my area until after 1AM. There was a brief peroid of similar weather (gusts to 60, driving rain) but it only lasted a few minutes. Just long enough to evacuate al the helicopter seeds from the trees onto the lawn I so meticulously mowed just 6 days ago.
Other news between this update and it's predecessor:
5/7/04, 10:32pm-
Seen on a messageboard:
2Al + Fe2O3 >> Al2O3 + Fe + metric sh1tload of heat
That's thermite for those of you who slept through high school chemistry. There's no real point to this post, except that I find the phrase "mertic shitload of heat" hilarious. In fact, I had to retype that last sentence since I was laughing.
Yes, I know I'm a [geek | dork | loon | wierdo | whatever] for mentioning that, and I'm quite comfortable with it. Now back to your regularly scheduled mayhem.
5/6/04, 10:13pm-
Most happiestest birthday wishes to Scott and Julie, who celebrated today. All I know about Scott's is that he went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory with his wife, since he was on his way there when I called him to pass along happy birthday wishes. I did get him something special, in addition to the two cheesy cards I always seem to find for him, but that something is subject to some delay, and won't arrive for a number of weeks. Knowledge of Julie's party was more immediate, since, well, I was there. Marc, Beth, Jamie, and Nicole were there too. There was food (thanks to Jamie) and dessert (thanks to Marc?), and Friends (thanks to NBC) and...yeah, it was fun. My very good friend Beth, on the ride home, left me with this little nugget: "I love you, you drive me crazy!" I was going to write some really existential commentary on that or something, but it'd all come out pure BS, so I'm just going to stop talking instead. It worked pretty well for me at the party...
5/2/04, 7pm-
I just got back from the Village Tavern with Julie and Marc. Holy crimeny those nachos are huge. I don't mean just big. They're the cat's pajamas of big appetizers, of reasonable prices and unreasonably large portions, as if they were the epitome of feline sleepwear. They were amazing. The chicken fingers were also pretty good.
Before the food, we were at the mall looking for...candles? a shirt? I was mildly confused, but spending time with the crew was more than enough fun to make me forget about out purpose and just dig the company.
Before the mall, we were at Ikea, that bastian of imported Sweedish furniture that's actually all made in China (it's a place I love to hate, and hate to love). I sat in what may have been the most comfortable leather armchair ever there, and I'm not even kidding. It made the PoŠng hair seem secondary to...well..everything. I'm serious. When I sat down my mind screamed BEST. CHAIR. EVER!!!11! If it wasn't $650 and an order-only item, I'd have brought one home, independent of the fact my car could never swallow something of that relative enormity.
As always, my Sunday night will be filled with TV and PS2 in alternate portions.
5/1/04, 8:40pm-
Today's random AIM transcript brought to you by bridges. N stuff.
fierceKP (8:37:45 PM): they need to make a BRIDGE
fierceKP (8:37:47 PM): from here to europe
fierceKP (8:37:49 PM): over the ocean!
fierceKP (8:37:51 PM): lol
dpatondotnet (8:37:51 PM): out of funk?
dpatondotnet (8:37:58 PM): and phat beatz?
fierceKP (8:38:03 PM): OR out of steel and wood n stuff
dpatondotnet (8:38:07 PM): with a top layer of mad rawkin rhymes
fierceKP (8:38:07 PM): but fun and beatz works too
fierceKP (8:38:11 PM): yeahhhhhhh
fierceKP (8:38:12 PM): lol
dpatondotnet (8:38:13 PM): with wordz n shit.
fierceKP (8:38:17 PM): make it go in your blog! do it!
4/21/04-
Rhoda Meyers. 1913 - 2004. Rest In Peace.
4/20/04. 10:15pm-
Shit this cool NEVER happen in Schaumburg. I need to move west, so I can have spontaneous encounters with eccentric movie magnates. Yeah.
4/11/04, 9:36pm-
As I write this, KP is finishing her harmony overdub for our cover of Glycerine. It's been a day of drum tracking, bass fiddling, and vox stuff, with the varied environs including a bedroom, a bedroom, and...um...a bedroom. I'm debating doing some harmony tracking of my own in the bathroom, just for some different ambience. We'll see. Oh, I took some pictures: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] See us rockin out? Yeah!
4/2/04, 11:40pm-
I dashed off to Borders to pick me up a copy of a blogging book. Yes, I need a book on blogging. I was first doing it, before it was cool, and I was more hardcore than anyone else I knew about it (hell, I still edit my inodes with a fridge magnet...) it was alright, and yet somehow I was passed by when it came time to hand out knowledge about things like MT and Drupal, so I bought a book. Of course, being the insatiable reader I am, I grabbed a small stack of magazines too, making for yet another example of my high dork quotient.
4/2/04, 9:35pm-
I *heart* orkut, but aparently there's no love in the return direction. I freely accept that I am not a member of the internet elite like emma, or even a poseur of sufficient proportions like the guys at FAL to warrant a direct invite, but I ask, how, out of all the net-centric people I know, did I get wholly excluded from this most luscious of social p2p ice cream treats? Am I some kind of broadband leper? Do I not exude teh kewl!!!1 required to gain passage? I'm vaguely confused here. Help?
The Vegas and SF updates are still coming. It's a slow process to distill all my thoughts for two weekends into less than 1k of text and a handfull of images. Be patient please.
3/24/04, 10:50pm-
The Vega$ update is coming, along with the SF update, early next week. I hope.
Tonight , like every other Wednesday night for the last couple of years, was 70s night at Beth's. Julie and Justin joined us for the latter half of the show and American Idol (wow, there are so many FX on those vocals...come on...Autotune? WTF?) and a good time was had by all. After Julie left around 9, B and I went back downstairs for a little couch time (no, not like that). We talked about work and life and politics and stupid people and we each had a rant or three, but mostly about personal things; dreams, plans, things like that. How men and women both suck, and neither understands the other. The boring life of a 20something suburbanite. It ended up a Best. Friend. Ever. kind of night, which we haven't been able to have in a while, what with her schedule and my schedule and life not cooperating. She's awesome. When she and/or I move(s) and get(s) married I'm gonna be bummed, cause it'll cut into D&B time, or at least run up amazingly high phone bills. I'm soaking up as much of it as I can while I'm able. I swear, she's the greatest...
self centered philosophical dave moment
At the same time, I feel a little guilty, because I have two best friends, but one is way out east, and I don't get to see him or his wife or their baby much, and we don't talk nearly as often as we should. I mean really, he's the brother I never had. Honest. And on the other side I have Beth, who is in some ways the person I'm closest to in my entire life. It's hard to strike a balance there, and it leaves me feeling uneasy some times, like one or the other is getting slighted. Pathetic and selfish, I know. Balancing two friends as close as they are...I suppose it kindof works itself out, but I still feel bad Scott and I don't talk as much as we used to, and it sucks when I don't see beth for a month or two at a time. I really need to work on being a better friend to them both. I suck.
Anyway, KP is IMing me and I really need to get to bed, so I'm signing off. Until next time...
3/17/04, 9:28pm-
In a littl eunder 20 hours I'll be winging my way to Vega$ for the 2004 NSCA expo. It'll be between 85 and 95 degrees at around 20% humidity the entire time I'm there, and I have every intention of enjoying the sun and the heat before returning to the craptastic weather here in the burbs. Next weekend will be a shorter trip to San Fran for Bink's Amp Shootout, with colder weather than Vega$, but probably still warmer than home. After that...I have no idea. I can't think more than 8 days ahead.
3/14/04, 1:59pm-
Happy pi day.
3/8/04, 7:55pm-
Well, you can bet I'm not going back to McGrath Honda again. Aside from the missing parts on my car from when they did the clutch, their service folks leave a lot to be desired. Greg is a nice guy, I'm sure. Kyle, the tech who worked on my car, is awesome at adjusting clutches. He's pretty bad about the little details that people like me notice tho. First it was the radio security lock. Then it was the missing screws. Then, when I mentioned all this to the service manager, he tried to buy me off. Not a single peep about fixing the hole in their process that allows such things, just an offer to compensate me the next time I was in. I don't want compensation I said, I just want your to fix the problem. More offers of compensation. Back and forth a few times. And I'm not even going to mention how the two license plate brackets that the dealership pays $5.43 a pair for (I saw the screen) and charged me $26 for. Fuckers. Can you tell I'm a little miffed?
3/3/04, 9:32pm-
I'm so far behind, I can't die. There's too much left to do. Honest. With the workload I have, I'd need to work 50 or 60 hours for the next 2 weeks to get all caught up. As it is, I doubt I'll be done before I get back from San Fran, let alone Vega$. 70s tonight with B was fun, especially since her folks are all cool n stuff. We joked profusely. Then West Wing came on, and normally it's not a show I watch too much, but tonight the muppets from Seasame Street were on. The muppets I tell you! Seeing Stockard Channing mugging it up with Elmo made my day, and I completely forgot about work, and the insane bill for my clutch, and the fact I'm still terminally single...
3/2/04, 7:46pm-
So I got my car back today. Yay. The total was right around $1100 for the clutch disc, pressure plate, throwout bearing, and new ball joint for the lower right front link (parts total: 492.30), with the remainder being the 603.25 in labor, some waste charges, and tax. The labor bugs me a little. At the standard mechanic rate of $75/hr, that's 8 hours, 2 minutes, and 14 seconds of labor time. 8 hours to drop the trans, replace the clutch and change a ball joint? I'm no professional mechanic, but I'm pretty sure if I had a lift and the tools they have at a dealership, I could have done it in 4 or 5 hours. I'm sure Kyle is a nice guy, and he did a farking amazing job adjusting the clutch ( Lightest. Clutch. EVER. And so smoooooooooove) but that seems like it was either way too long, or labor rates have gone up and are now insane instead of just pricey. The upshot, I got my car back, and I love it. It took me about half an hour of driving to get used to the lighter pedal and different engagement point, but I'm all about it now. Yeah.
I also got a raise. Not a big one, but huzzah, I got a raise.
void main (void)
{
while (1 > 0)
{
_iTunes_play("Local H","Fine and Good",0xB);
}
}
2/29/04, 11:10pm-
Last night Carson and I sampled some righteous tunes at abusive levels. It was fun. I went to Lafayette today to check in with some friends and chat with Tony about the state of WCCR and it's gear. I can't really say I'm suprised by what I found, but I can say that my disappointement with the levels the management has sunk to in order to control the one attractive club left at ChŽ Quad knows no bounds. It hurt to see what I worked so hard to build had been taken away so swiftly, and without remorse. I'm going to do what I can from here to help out, be it emails, information, or on-site consulting. It just seems too good to let it die like this. This is one of those moments when I really need a hug. Unfortunately none is forthcoming. I hope to jeebus that my life won't mirror that of the infamous radio station for which I learned so much, worked so hard, and have so much love.
2/28/04, 2:03pm-
I just got off the phone with McGrath. Aparently FedEx misdelivered my throwout bearing, and instead routed it to Orlando, while a FLA-bound box made it's way to Elgin. The result? I won't be driving my own car until Tuesday. On the scale from 0 to suck, this is about a 12. My parents are loaning me a car for the duration, which is veyr nice gesture which should be wholly unnecessary if the dealership or FedEx had done their jobs properly. So much for my wonderful Saturday. Hopefully tonight will be better, as it is slated to include Carson and some music.
2/26/04, 10:47pm-
So my clutch exploded. Yeah. I was on my way to Julies when it started making strange noises, and it got a little squirrely so I went to head to McGrath, and at the corner of Schaumburg and 59 it let go with a horiffic clattering sound, locking my trans in neutral and leaving me to dead-stick my car onto the median. A call to AAA netted me a 45-60 minute ETA for a tow truck, and a call home got me a van into which to move the sound gear for my demo tomorrow morning, as well as 2 parents, a sister, and another car for the ride from the dealership back home (after the towtruck got my car there and I finished the paperwork that is). I'm pretty sure the problem is an exploded clutch spring or two, as the stock clutch is wont to have after a hundred thousand miles or so. I cannot express in words the anger that was caused because my car was immobilized by the failure of a $0.99 part. I also cannot express the inconvenience this will cause if Dee is not better by Saturday night. Grr.
2/21/04, 4:01pm-
I dumped out the bag I take to work, looking for a screwdriver. In the bag were all the usual trappings of my job. They're things you might see in your own bag, if you were a sound guy. If you look carefully you'll see 6 kinds of adapter cables, 8 different connectors too.
$^&*(#$$##$&*($#&$)^ Pagespinner. Aparently it can't save files to system directories. Fine, handle it gracefully, and throw a verbose error. You know what happens instead? It blows away the contents of the file, leaving an empty one. #(@)()#*@()!*#(%$%^ There were 3 blog entires between this one and the rave SPL one, two of which I spent a significant amount of time crafting, and which are gone forever. Thanks a bunch Optima. Way to fix a serious bug I told you about 3 years ago. Don't plan on getting my money the next time you want to sell me a major upgrade. I'm really steamed right now. Grr.
2/14/04, 5:49pm-
On rave SPLs.
There's a majority of people who do not understand the reasoning behind the copius quantity of subwoofers and PA used for rave type events. This will be my rambling attempt at explaining the need for music so loud it causes cones to disintegrate and amplifiers to self destruct.
There is something about music that makes most folks want to play it loud. Sometimes, there is music that makes normal folks want to listen to it really loud.
Occasionally, you'll find music that will inspire a small subset of the population to play it so loud that it begins to physically vibrate your soul.
Those are the people who go to raves.
There is something about music, occasionally individually, but more often in the presence of like minded individuals, that seems to induce a need to feel it, to be a part of it, to make the notes so physical as to be able to feel them touching you.
My little theory is that it's the power. Not the hundreds of amps of AC voltage that powers the rigs, but the physical perception of the music. The visceral and physical sensation of pounding beats. My tentative theory is that high volumes of (especially of low distortion) music, induce a self-sustaining psychological reaction in the listener. It's an addictive reaction too. A lot of the rave kids I know wear good plugs when they go out. Not because it protects their hearing (even tho they're often aware of this side effect) but because of the change in the balance of aural vs physical sensation they induce. With plugs in, the general volume of the music is lowered between 15 and 35dB in the ear canal, but the perception of the body is left unchanged, making for a very physical experience. It's also a self-sustaining, and somewhat self-amplifying reaction as well. All of those endorphins feel good, and we want that good feeling to get better, so the music goes louder, and the sensation gets larger, and more and more as long as the listeners aren't taken out of the context of the music. The same cycle works on folks without plugs, but with detrimental results. When exposed to very loud sounds for continuous periods, the ear self limits. It becomes less sensitive, leading to the same effect as earplugs, but with the disastrous consequence of permanent hearing loss.
Personally, I freely admit my indulgence in insane audio levels. The key is I protect my ears at the same time. I pop in the 25dB inserts into my plugs an hour or so before the show, to give my ears time to re-sensitize themselves to the added inline attenuation. By the time the show starts, my ears have re-aligned and re-EQd themselves so things sound normal. Over the course of the evening, my ears will ratchet their internal nerve limiting back to roughly where it is with my plugs out, but the physical sensation of the music will be 25-30dB hotter than usual, resulting in a uniquely tactile experience. When I leave, I pop out the plugs and things are perfectly normal. I fed my jones for a hit of beats, and life is good. Now if only I could find a way to isolate a room in my house so that I could experience that kind of feeling on a regular basis without pissing off the neighbors.
Go forth and rawk.
2/13/04, 6:58pm-
"What has happened in our society to make us embrace violence and shy away from sexuality?"
What is the matter with a society that so callously shows the explosion of blood and bone resulting from a shotgun blast to a kneecap in T2 and yet starts federal inquiries into 2 seconds of a mostly bare breast in primetime? Why does it lead of it bleeds? For that matter, why is the guy who beats the living shit out of his sworn enemy admired, while the guy who never gets in a fight and grows roses for his girlfriend is labeled as unworthy? Where is the love?
Speaking of that, where is my love? It's been a couple of years since I saw it last, and what with Valentines day being tomorrow and....er.....never mind. Forget I mentioned it.
2/8/04, 3:42pm-
After 99 hours and 16 minutes I finally finished Ratchet and Clank. That's about twelve and a half days of 8 hour gameplay. Needless to say, it's been spread over a month of evenings and weekends, but yeah, it took a while. Julie seems to think that heading to the Elbo Room to see Chris back up Karlye on Friday the 13th would be fun, so I think we just might.
Speaking of Julie, last night was fire-tastic. She came over and we just kinda veged on TLC for a bit. We tried to call Beth to join us, but her cell wasn't on, and someone was hogging the phone at her house. B, are you listening? We miss you! Tonight will likely be pretty mellow too.
The downside of having your computer on an outsude wall of a 30+ year old house is that your feet get cold. Very cold. I think I'm going to go do something about that.
2/6/04, 5:16pm-
Welcome to the uberblog. So much happened this week, and I worked so much, I'm fried. Let's see if I can get this all down coherantly.
Wednesday was a trip to Nellies with Chris. The ISP guys installed a 5.1 system with their "line array" boxes (ignore the bullshit hype on the site. It makes sense at first glance, but doesn't hold up at all under logical scrutiny). Jebus it sucked a lot. first off, the "4 box" lines on each side and in the center were actually one box. A few of the 4" mid compression drivers had aparently been removed and replaced with dummy plugs because they caused even more peoblems installed. The pattern control was nonexistant, there was phase crap, comb filter crap, box crap, driver crap, coverage crap, intermod crap, port noise crap from the subs...and it was scooped beyond belief (sorry Scully, your're wrong. It sounds terrible). It was so bad, it took me 2 days of thinking about it to figure out all the things it did wrong. The subs...can you say lobing? The "rear" boxes were suspended with one of the scariest steel bracket rigs I've ever seen, and louder than the mains (WTF?). The fact it took them 21 boxes, including subs, to do a 500 person shoebox is apalling. Servo stuff could do it in less than half that. Better. Louder. And cheaper, if ISP hadn't whored their rig out for less than 20% of MSRP. Holy crap it was bad. I'm not sure I'll go back to see any bands there. Ever. Are you listening Tim?
Last night was Cubby North. Not too much news, except for the ancient MR boxes, and ex-DB Deltamax crap they had. Did I mention how bad the hangs were? Chris and I made special effort not to walk under any of the speakers once we saw the rigging from the 2nd floor. We chatted with Steve, the manager too. Not much hope for getting a demo any time soon, but we did gain some useful information...
And when I'm not galavanting all over the suburbs looking for new spots to sell gear to, I'm in my office, putting together 8 bids in 5 days, including over 1.5MB of specs and pricing in Excel and lord knows how many MBs of StarDraw files for all the racks, stacks, and block diagrams each customer needs (not to mention all the rack devices I had to manually create because the libraries farking SUCK). If things move like they're supposed to, my little company will get very large and very wealthy very fast. That would be pretty damn cool, and a little bit scary. For now tho, I'm so ready for a weekend it isn't even funny. I think I'll I'm up for is non-intellectual fun with Julie, and maybe Beth, if she's available. We'll see.
2/4/04, 5:31pm-
I could so use some more cool t-shirts.
SO anyway, I ended up with a little more sleep than usual this morning, since I had site meetings at 9 and 11. Phil and I grabbed some breakfast-like stuff in between. The rest of the workday was spent doing plots and bid packs, and the rest of the week will be the same, except for the site visits tomorrow and Thursday. The nice part is that I think I can expense dinner both nights. The downside? I'll need to bring earplugs. Why can't everyone buy good speakers?
2/1/04, 4:23pm-
A trip to the mall with KP produced exaclty one sweater, which was free when I got a pair of pants at PacSun. Late lunch at John's Garage was good. Now, I think it's time to get ready to watch some football.
2/1/04, 11:43am-
I'm going to be quasi-detailing the inside of my car today. Usually the guys at Three Oaks do a good job, but the line was running so fast yesterday that they didn't do the back seat area or a lot of the places they usually do in front. Then, I think I may hit the mall in search of someone who doesn't have their spring stock out already, because I feel a need for more sweaters and some comfy long sleeve shirts. I could probably do with a pair of lined slacks too, since being in sales requires me to look nice for clients, and cohabitating with my parents requires me to park outside at night a lot. I'm sure time will bring a happy resolution to both quandrys, but I'd like to do an end-around on at least one. Call me impatient, since I don't answer to Ishmael.
2/1/04, 1:46am-
I often whine about life not having some of the nice feedback we get form somputer systems, like FAQs, manpages, or stderr() responses. Thinkgeek has solved that problem, at least for a subset of society. My sleep-averse brain found the link over at Emma's and just couldn't stop tickling my laugh reflex. I suppose that's a signal I should go try and lay down again.
1/31/04, 2:07pm-
Had brunch/lunch with Julie @ IHOP, which was really good. Our waitress was super nice. It's a real bummer her car got hit yesterday. It looks like it may be expensive to fix. We'll see. She's OK tho, which is more important.
Chris called me...it looks like one of the jobs we're looking at will be a slam dunk. Yay.
1/31/04, 12:01am-
Hooray for rawk: Motion City Soundtrack, Sugarcult, MXPX and Simple Plan at The Riv.
Of course by rawk I mean MXPX and Sugarcult. I can't really understand why MXPX got top billing everywhere but the actual act order. After MXPX went off and Simple Plan started to set up, KP noted they could only top the MXPX act if they had pyro and naked people. They lacked both. Simple Plans best songs were the covers they did: So Happy Together (which they thought was from the 80s? WTF?), and a medley of Get the Party Started and another one which escapes me, both of which r0x0red, despite my mild dislike for the band and their über-catchy riffs. Their original stuff...eh. It was OK, not great, but pretty good. Just medio-core. Sugarcult played amazingly well with drumming duties performed by Carlos of Reel Big Fish after the regular drummer had to bow out for back surgery. The keyboard player for MCS was just plain insane. He was like a frustrated gymnast, improvising acrobatic feats while playing. It was damn impressive. After I wake up we'll see whether or not a night of continuous Rock Concert Movement Number Three has ravaged my fragile self.
1/29/04, 6:45pm-
The virus spam flowing to my inbox has "slowed" to about 30 every 10 minutes. That's not much of an improvement to my way of thinking. *sigh*
Thought for the day:
Christianity is like the internet. When it was new, it was obscure, hard to use, and only abe to be truly understoof by the most highly educated members of the society. Now we have spam.
1/28/04, 4:28pm-
3,986. Three Thousand, Nine Hundred, Eighty Six. That's how many of those damn virus emails and bounce notifications I got today. Considering the rate at which they're filling my spam box after I deleted the ones from earlier, the rate right now is about one every 21 seconds. That's bad.
Aparently my IEEE address is one of the ones that's been spoofed, so about half of the email I get is bounces from virus filters on other email systems. I suppose it'll take a few months for that address to fall out of the filters and spam lists, only to reappear this time next year like it always seems to. *sigh*
I'm glad I have a totally unpublished email address as a backup for when this whole thing falls apart under the weight of these spineless script kiddies.
I'm really getting sick of this shit. Why can't the internet go back to the way it was? Obscure, hard to use, and the domain of the intellectual acedemic? Then I might actually be able to get some stuff done...
1/27/04, 5:31pm-
I'd like to take a moment to send a big, bright fah-q to the people who make windows so goddamn insecure. Not because I experienced any personal problems, but because my inbox here at home (on my completely unaffected Mac) was hit with over 8000 instances of that stupid virus that came out yesterday. 8,338 to be exact. They consumed almost 80MB of my hard drive space, and took the better part of a few minutes to trash, due to the database nature of my mail client. I swear, if I ever meet the people who made this all possible, I'm going to introduce them to the true meaning of pain...
1/25/04, 4:16pm-
For my birthday, I got all kinds of cool stuff. One of the coolest was from State Farm, who knocked 25% off my car insurance bill. Yeah!
Last night was fun. I caught The Italian Job at Ché Julie. Actually that's not quite true. She caught it, while I fought (and lost to) her fireplace. Eventually flames prevailed over wet wood, and my ego recovered nicely. I also did a little bit of appliance repair. Truth be told, it's the first time I've ever worked on a vacuum at 3am, but this morning she found a replacement for the broken belt we discovered, and all is well in cleaning land again, or so I hope.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, it's back to Ratchet and Clank, and my slowly receding headache.
1/19/04, 9:26pm-
My sister took some pics at the little family gathering thingy we had. I thought y'all might like to see them: (candles, cutting the cake, present). They're pretty goofy, but for once in my life I look decent in candids (as opposed to usual, where I look like a tall skinny dork). I really really really really wish I'd brought a camera along last night, because the 3 of us had so much fun, and the girls were so cute together.....yeah. Again, my friends rawk.
1/18/04, 9:11pm-
I love my friends. They're the best. Tonight was my belated birthday dinner with Beth and Julie. We started out at the local Max & Ermas, where a good time was had by all. They got me some Old Navy Perfomance Fleece, so now I can be all cool like Morgan Fairchild. I love it. It's all warm and fleecy n stuff. Yeah! After dinner we chatted about anything and everything for an hour or so, until it was time for dessert at The Melting Pot (a fondue restaurant). Our waiter, Patrick (who bore a vague resemblance to a young, thin Lawrence Fishburn), was aparently the hit of the night, eliciting some choicely timed admiration from my female companions, one of whose phone number was left on the bill (by my other companion no less).
There's nothing particular that sticks out in my mind as being overridingly fun, but I think that tonight was one of those real-life examples of the whole being more (way more actually) than the sum of its parts. Really. It was amazing. Thank you guys. You're the best ever.
1/18/04, 1:34am-
My hand hurts. In a good way, but it still hurts. My playstation now runs upstairs too, thanks to Viewsonic and Pelican. After a few hours of GT3 I think I could use one of these as well, but that's a purchase I'll make at some later point in the future, like when I can buy one that'll work on my Mac too.
In about 15 hours (+/-3dB) I'll be leaving for dinner with Beth and Julie, for a mildly belated celebration of my 25th birthday. I'm still not sure where we're going yet, but I'm pretty sure we're going to end up at The Melting Pot for dessert if we keep out apetites somewhat intact.
And with that, it's time for me to sleep.
1/17/04, 2:47am-
There's ice outside. More than a little. When I left for Chili's with Julie, it was just fine. Some time between 9 and 2:30 a whole lotta frozen water came down, and it made the trip back from Elgin a real adventure. The plows were running so close to the road they were throwing sparks. Not a few here and there, a complete, total, blade-wide sheet of sparks. I suppose it was to clean the crap off the road, but judging by what was trying to stick to my windshield, they needed more plows a lot more often to make that a reality. There wasn't any skidding, because I know what I'm doing in nasty weather, but it has the makings for a real mess unless it lets up. Ugh.
The evening was quite nice. After food, Bruce Almighty was screened at Ché Julie to positive reviews, and conversation continued into the wee hours of today. The conclusion: J rawks :-)
Aparently Beth came back from her mini vacation today, and is recovering from some kind of 72 hour bug she acquired while away. Here's hoping she's well for dinner on Sunday. Welcome back B, hope you feel better.
1/15/04, 7:58pm-
In commemoration of 25 years of breathing on my part, there was a small celebration at Ché Paton tonight. It was pretty cool. I scored a PS2, a couple of games, an assortment of film, and the admiration of the masses. OK, maybe not that last part, but the rest it all true, I swear. Time to go suck at GT3 :D
1/14/04, 11:04pm-
In honor of my birthday April and Ryan took me to dinner tonight. It was lots of fun. We talked about new stuff, old stuff, things that haven't happened yet, things that should have happened, and everything in between. I was fun. I think I said that. Yay for April Dawn and Ryan! They rock! Yeah!
In less than an hour, I'll turn 25. Aparently that's a big deal, because mycar insurance goes down and stuff. I'm not that excited. Last year, when I turned 24 (even more uneventful) I didn't do much. The party was family only, and I got some nice phone calls, and it was great. By next Monday I'll have had 3 Birthday dinners, and I'm sure I'll receive gifts galore from people. Is 25 really that big of a deal? I'm not trying to diminish what my friends and family are doing, because I think it's really awesome that they care that much (so awesome the really gets bolded, which doesn't happen here often), but I really don't understand the hoopla. I'm a twentysomething. I'll probably throw a bash when I turn 30 and 40 and 50 and all that, but those are real milestones to me ( don't sweat it J, you'll look 25 forever to me :-). 25 is...well...I dunno...
1/12/04, 11:00am-
Yay for me. I have a job. I'll be working for a little company called JESA, doing sales for high end installed audio, among other things. It's not EAGLE and flux and staff meetings, but it's audio, and it's income, and it should be fun.
1/11/04, 1:54pm-
When I sliced into the side of my left thumb with the chisel, I chalked it up to the wood, the angle I was cutting at, and coincidence. When I dropped a heavy box on my right foot, I ascribed it to my own clumsiness. When a clamp cut my right ring finger and caused a blood blister the size of Toledo, I got the message. I'll try the woodworking thing again tomorrow. Today obviously isn't my day. Bleeding from 3 different places is a pretty strong hint to that effect, don't you think?
*sigh*
1/11/04, 10:44am-
Wow. I woke up a lot earlier than I thought. My head didn't hit the pillow until a little after....er....um....*cough*fiveam*cough*. Of course, that was a direct result of starting to watch the NASA thing on PBS about the most recent mission to Mars (you know, the one that plopped the Spirit rover onto out nearest semi-inhabitable neighbor late last week?). Now watching an exciting thing like that (hey, I'm an engineer...I'm allowed to find things like that interesting alright? like the Mars moblog!) doesn't usually knock me out, but it was after a longish day, and I was under the fur and a blanket all snuggled up in a beanbag, and was thus more comfortable than...well...I was comfortable. It was also close to 1am. I woke up to those annoying after hours PBS images, and went straight to bed, do not pass go, do not collect $200. I findi it miraculous that just a touch over 5 hours after that I was awake, coherant, and feeling pretty good. I mute be doing something right.
Now it's time to fire up the compressor and make some boxes. Yeah!
1/10/04, 10:53pm-
The dinner party was interesting. It wasn't so much a dinner party as a housewarming party with lots and lots of food. Julie mentioned that some time in the past, but I conveniently forgot. Oops. There were a ton of district people there. I got to meet some of the players in the stories I've heard form Beth and Julie, and it made things so much more clear. The people were fun and talkative, which is always nice when you don't know anyone. Well, almost anyone. Also attending were Mrs Zito, my science teacher in magnet, and now the asst. superintendent for instruction, and Mrs. Tammen, my math teacher in the same period, and recently retired. I had a very nice conversation with both of them, and caught up a little bit. It was fun.
After I got home I put in some more work on the train boxes. The little cleats that will hold the shelves needed some personal attention, and by morning I should be able to assemble the thing. Again, fun stuff.
1/10/04, 3:23pm-
After procuring some proper plywood (baltic birch, on sale at Woodcraft) I've made significant strides toward real live storage for my trains. Unfortunately, I'm not even half done, and I have to take a break to go be social. Aparently there is a large scale dinner party of some sort that Julie is attending, and I'm supposed to go along. It should be fun. There will aparently be lots of new people for me to embarrass myself in front of. After that, there may or may not be a movie. We're going to play it by ear. At the end fo the night, I'll return home to the garage, and continue gluing little quarter round chunks of pine onto my Norse plywood in preparation for gluing and nailing manyana.
Fun stuff. Pictures of the progress of the train boxes may or may not be posted. I'm not sure yet. If it goes really well, I might write something up for MR. We'll see.
1/10/04, 1:42am-
I try and refrain from being overly political here. This little blog is about me, not the world. Unfortunately, when I read things that make me feel physically ill, and find out that other people agree, I feel need to post. Like Wil, I find the idea of "Free Speech Zones" insane, and the directions that the current administration is pointing us in are scary beyond words. The fact that a secret presidential finding can authorize foreign nationals to be detained and then sent to (different) foreign nations for torture and brutalization in what would normally be a violation of the Geneva Convention rulings on the treatment of prisoners and civillians makes my stomach do things I haven't felt since I saw my life flash before my eyes in a car accident (of course, we're not really at war so all those silly rules don't quite apply...).
Any administration that makes me feel the same as when I thought I was going to die needs to go. NOW. I cannot emphasize how much we CANNOT allow this kind of thing to continue. This is not how this country was built. This is not within the traditional laws and governances of our nation. The National Security act of 1947 allows the government to do just any anything to anyone (if they have a real reason), but it's slipshod application has turned our country into a place where average citizens are afraid to speak their mind under the scrutiny of the FBI, and where news commentators are warned to "watch what they say" by presidential representatives. These types of things are why I am very seriously contemplating relocating to another country. Permenantly.
Interesting tidbit: Arar Maher, the extradited and tortured Canadian mentioned above, shares a last name with a rather prominent critic of the administration. I wonder what our favorite rabblerousing host will do now that he knows his name is (at least partially) on the list?
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1/9/04, 9:41pm-
yes, I'm aware that I'm at home, posting in my blog, on a Friday night when I should be out causing trouble. It's not that I'm unpopular, it's that I'm so goddam emo it's disturbing.
1/8/04, 11:37pm-
I'm sitting here listening to Lou Reed sing about a boy who became a girl on a busride from Miami to L.A., and wishing I had an acoustic bass so I could sound as cool as the guy playing in the song. Of course, there are a lot of things I want more than an acousic bass. Talent for playing the bass would be a good start, or a band, or a number of other things. Hmmm...Julie used to be a drummer, and my sister is currently, and Beth has a guitar....
Speaking of Julie, lunch at Panera was fun, with the usual complement of laughter. That was cool.
I spent the evening applying technical smackdowns to a few of the n00bs over at RC Tech concerning things like "why 0.0008 ohms of resistance really doesn't matter" and "Ferrite is not a panacea" and "why batteries don't like to be fan cooled when they're being charged." Hopefully there was a little bit of knowledge injected into someone's day with those posts. I really like helping the people there out, but there are a couple of guys who just don't get it. *sigh*
Tori is playing now, and I feel the need to note that I find her voice soothing in a mildly indescribable way, like a muted version of my reaction to Sarahs music. In the interests of broadcasting my continued commitment to masculinity as a counterbalance to those two, I listened to MXPX and Metallica a lot today, which was also soothing, in a fast-kickdrum-and-loud-guitars sort of way.
I just told my Mac to speak this entry (yay for contextual services!). It was pretty good, but Apple needs to make the speech engine understand A HREF= commands so that the voice doesn't try and speak the link code, and some syllabic smoothing would go a long way toward making Victoria sound more human. Even ditching those annoying clicks between syllables and words would be a big improvement. Come on Apple...Ms. Anderson deserves so much more than the current implementation of PlainTalk gives her....
1/8/04, 7:24pm-
This disturbs me, even though it's likely I'll be ineligable by the time it gets passsed into law. It doesn't disturb me because of the requirements, it disturbs me that the language about the activities required is so nebulous, and that it obligates every person in the country, not just citizens, to participate, and that the chances of college getting you out are slim and none. Grrr. I wish I could this administration to be altruistic, but I can't see them as anything but sinister and devious.
1/1/04, 1:58am-
Happy new year everybody!
Just got home from Scott's (no, not that one, the British one who lives halfway to Rockford) NYE party, where there was much laughing and gaming and drinking and carousing, along with singing and a juggling demonstration...using flaming torches. It was fun. Thanks to Julie for calling, and bad friend points to me for not calling Beth or Scott (no, not that one, the one I've known since I was 9) like I planned. Andy and Erin never made it out, which was unfortunate, because I kinda wanted to see him one more time before he heads back down south. Zink also bailed, but she spent the evening downtown at the Metro, with Steve and Mike, watching a concert that (according to Carla at Q101) rocked the doors off of 2003, so it's totally excusable. Resolutions you ask? Be a better friend (ie, keep in contact more), finish what I've started, and find a new job. Not necessarially in that exact order, but it's 2am, and close enough counts.
Happy new year folks.
For news from 2002, visit the Old News '02
For news from 2003, visit the Old News '03
