<<xBlogxPhilesx>>
The other thing I am doing is reorganizing my codebase. You might have noticed the version increment, or not. I was cleaning up files while working on the XHTML compliance, which included removing some old ones and changing some HTML files to PHP so I could use my common data files. I had some stuff in separate files for ease of maintenance, but I decided that it would be even easier to put all of that stuff into a single file and call out only the parts that I need. This will make things easier later, but it means that I have to learn more PHP now. Some things will probably stay in separate files for a while, like the menu that can be seen in raw form here.
I am going to be moving from the fifth floor down to the fourth soon. I already moved from the place I was during my last update to another on the same floor. Strange, this update and the last one involves a cubicle transfer. And I have taken the time to bring this site into compliance with the XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD. Hooray, standards.
The guy who sat in the cubicle facing me, Jim Bickelhaupt, was forced to move so a new guy could move next to the rest of his team. This guy is Ralph Sommersgill, or something, and I suppose he's a fine fellow but there is a particular trait that he has which is very distracting: his voice sounds exactly like my friend Michael Belk. Aside from the fact that I keep thinking about Michael whenever he talks, it's just really weird that two people could actually have the same voice. I am going to look for a good opportunity to ask if he is from North Carolina.
Just to get this out in the open: I'm tired of politics. I can't believe the low tactics of the Democrats, either, and I know that we only went to war so some people could profit. I don't need to hear any more. I also know that the Libertarian candidate has no chance of winning and I should keep national security in mind when voting. I probably will remember that, but I'm tired of the whole thing. November cannot arrive too soon.
The other great thing about November is that GTA: San Andreas will be out, and probably R&C: Up Your Arsenal. I don't know the release date for Ratchet & Clank off the top of my head, but I'm sure it's got to be before November.
What the hell, it's already the end of July?
We put Sam upstairs for the first time last night. Somehow I got even less sleep, and not because he was waking up more than usual. I suppose it was because I was watching him or messing with the vents in his room so he won't be too cold. Or maybe because moving that crib upstairs really took it out of me.
I'll just tell you right now that I am having a hard time thinking about much other than the minimum requirement these days. This includes Sam, Karen, work, school, and games. If any of you bother to come around after my month away from updating everyone on the fascinating details of my life, I'll list off some stuff I have been up to lately. Don't expect me to change the Caption Contest just yet, though.
Sam is working on what they call cruising. This is moving around while holding onto something. He can't crawl but he's more interested in walking anyway. Right now he is able to circumnavigate his playpen on foot by holding onto the top of the walls. He is getting more coordinated every day. He also says "Ba ba ba..." a lot, and sometimes "Ma maaaaa..." when he is in dire need of being held, which seems to be most of the time.
Karen and I are doing what we can to just hold things together. We are not the sort of people who normally let something minor like a new child alter our carefree lifestyle, but some sacrifices have been made. I, for example, have voluntarily stopped buying games. Well, except for the recent Chronicles of Riddick... and before that Thief: Deadly Shadows... but trust me, I'm really holding back. Playtime for me comes after playtime for Sam, and most of the other things I have given up to spend more time sitting in the floor making crazy noises were a hassle to me in the first place, so it's not really too bad.
Karen, on the other hand, had to cut some time from something she dearly loves: sleep. She also has to cut back on most of her hobbies, particularly the time-consuming ones or the ones which take some setup time, such as the PhotoShop work she was doing. It is a pain to keep PhotoShop working, especially when you download fifty plugins for it, so that has had to go. She now reads as a hobby, working on others as she can. Work is busy for her, and while it is nothing she cannnot handle, it can be very stressful.
Let's not forget that this website is about me. I mentioned that I bought The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, and it is really great. Not for kids, or even for adults who don't care for R-rated action movies. I don't play this one when Sam is around. I got another one on the same day, but it's much tamer: Voodoo Vince. That one is a solid platformer and very funny. It's no Ratchet & Clank, but what is? Before that, I found Freedom Force and Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy at Sam's Club. Sphinx is a well-made Zelda ripoff, one which does not immediately appear to be a ripoff. Once you start analyzing the similarities, it's pretty obvious, but that is fine because you can't go wrong by imitating one of the best games ever made. I have not even installed Freedom Force, somehow being sidetracked by Fallout Tactics again. Not the recent one but the original one in which you guide a squad of Brotherhood through various encounters.
Something weird, I have started to play .hack: Infection again. Not sure why, and not sure I even like the game. I remembered something last night which irritated me, though: you can only carry forty different item types. That was a real bother when I discovered that again out in the field. I should probably be working on some other game which is more interesting or good, but I have to play what I get the urge for. Lately I have not felt the urge to play Project Gotham, Red Faction, Thief 3, Far Cry, or some other games I surely own.
The high production values of Sam's web pages have sort of prompted me to take a look at using a professional development program. I found that Coke has Dreamweaver MX available, so I installed it and am poking at the tutorial. I don't have a tremendous amount of time to put into this site even using my traditional method, so it will probably be a while before you see Tech Soup v8.0, or whatever it will be called. I agree that the old name, a web site, was not terribly descriptive or memorable, but I still miss it.
News... news... ah, OK. I bought a new Xbox yesterday to replace my crappy one. I looked at the repair guides you will find all over the internet, but they were pretty complicated, plus I really don't want my Xbox to become another, smaller PC which I have connected to a TV instead of a high-res monitor. Microsoft dropped the price recently, so I just bought another at Target. The guy who checked me out was wistfully pining away for one of his own; I just didn't have it in me to tell him that this was my second one.
Sam is doing pretty well aside from the teething thing. He can get pretty irritable about it. He also gets really upset when you don't feed him at night. We were going to see about skipping the 0230 meal, but after three minutes of crying Karen just could not take it. Well, screaming is more like it, so I fed him. I think the thing to do is to really go all out with the baby food and apple juice, giving formula only when we need to. I'm not sure when that would be, exactly, but I'm sure we will figure it out.
The other issue is the sleeping thing. Sam doesn't like to sleep, and I told him that is perfectly fine as long as he did not yell and cry. Unfortunately, babies cry. It's what they do. I or Karen will amuse him until he gets droopy-eyed, then we will rock him until he goes to sleep. I know, and presumably others know, this is not a good thing since Sam is not learning how to go to sleep on his own. The thing to do is to put him down while awake and let him drift off, but we have two things working against us: he fights sleep like crazy, and Karen can't stand the crying. I'm pretty much stuck with doing something I think is bad for Sam since Karen can make me far more miserable than Sam can. We still have some time, I think, to work on the sleep thing, so I am just biding my time for now.
You might have heard that I have been busy lately with a project at work, one which I now refer to as The Mummy's Curse. It was a week late last Friday, but I am pretty sure I can get it done before the end of this week. I gave a time-estimate for a particular task as 48 hours, when it really took 13... which was a total accident but worked out well. Even though I had yet another problem last night and had to restart it, I should have plenty of time and no one should be the wiser. Assuming that it does not break again.
Since I have been staying up working until hours such as 0200 and 0400, plus the usual breaks and extensions for the night feedings at 2300, 0200 and 0500, it has been hard for me to get some time to myself. I have managed it to a degree by avoiding other chores outside work and school. In fact I have to write a two-paragraph report on something I have never heard of, before this Saturday night, then there is the six-page research paper on myocardial infarctions as they relate to FAA regulations which I really need to start working on. Hopefully this Mummy's Curse will be done soon so I can start doing more classwork.
I thought of a few haiku on the way in to work today. I really should have been thinking about driving, but you have to obey the muse when she calls.
I just checked the Bitch Barn and looks like it is working again. I think I lost some messages, but since you people don't bother to put anything in there, it should not matter. I'll get things back to 100% eventually. Looks like everyone gets to repost their caption again, thanks to my unprofessional backup-and-restore of the site data.
I was about to give a great update yesterday, mostly about how much I kick ass, but I have become swamped in work. Fortunately for me, I am currently waiting on some expert help on one project, another is delayed due to lack of hardware, and another has been passed off to someone else. Another issue cropped up this morning but I think I managed to avoid actually working on it by handing out some sage advice.
Back to what I was going to originally talk about. Most of you probably don't know that I have started taking classes again in order to finally get my bachelor's degree. The reason you probably don't know is also because I'm working on my bachelor's degree and have pretty much stopped communicating with the outside world. I don't play Horizons or Final Fantasy XI anymore, and am seriously considering canceling the accounts, even though I really don't want to lose my characters I have worked so hard on. The simple facts are that I spend most of my time working on either my actual job or classwork or Sam or Karen, and I am trying to make the outgoing money less than the incoming money. That list is not in order of importance.
As I am frequently overheard saying, life is full of hard decisions. It's best not to worry about your decision in the end, just make the best choice you can and go from there. It's still pretty hard at times, even with this sort of carefree attitude which I try to maintain. Currently I have to stay focused on schoolwork even though it is causing a real issue as far as expenses, as well as taking time away from Karen. It is also taking away from Sam but not nearly as much because I am being dilligent, or at least as dilligent as I can get.
Apparently Sam is about to start sleeping through the night. Maybe I'm just being hopeful, since he usually wakes at 0200 for a feeding, but not last night. He slept from about midnight to 0500, which may or may not be a trend, but Karen and I think we should encourage it. Aside from letting K get more sleep, it will free up a nice chunk of the nighttime for me. Did I mention I don't sleep a lot?
I didn't sleep a lot before Sam arrived, I admit. I averaged five hours a night with some makeup sleep on the weekend. Some people say that you can't make up for missed sleep, but I know what I know. Anyway, these days I seem to be going to sleep around 0100 or 0200 and waking up at around 0400 or 0500 for about half an hour, then getting up for real at 0730. That comes out to six hours if I am lucky, four if I'm not. The trouble is that it's not continuous, and sleeping late on the weekends is not so easy anymore. So far I am not too bad off, I just do weird things like hang up a shirt in a strange place or misplace my coffee cup more often than I used to. I did feel sort of panicky this morning: for some reason I thought that some small monster just might leap from the back seat of my truck and attack me from behind. I realized that must just be my brain going sour, so I drank some more coffee.
The new server is now, uh, serving my web site and things are starting to get back to normal. I'm not sure why the CGI programs are not working... well maybe they are, I have not bothered to check today. Until I get those time-wasters back into operation, you will just have to make do with my scintillating commentary on life.
I really should be working on classwork, since the final is due Saturday and I have a five-page paper to write. The problem is that I just cannot stand to hear the complaining about the web site anymore. I am on the new server now, and some things simply did not make the trip. Additionally, I am taking the time to rewrite some stuff which will eventually make site maintenance easier on me. I didn't think this was a huge deal since this is really my web site, but turns out that Sam is planning on using the site to host his Shrine to Cuteness. I can't deny him, he worked so hard on it, plus it has a sci-fi theme.
I have implemented a great deal of modularity with the site with version 7.2.0, which might cause some weird things to show up until I get them worked out. I have sent an email to my ISP about the Caption Contest not working, and I have started to rewrite it in PHP, but as you might guess, that could take a while.
I am using the new machine and looks like I still have some work to do. Too bad I have to work on my real job and my classwork. I'll get the usual timewasting devices up and running eventually.
Congratulations to Jen for giving birth to Julia on the 27th. I'm sure both of you are pretty happy about that. Well, Julia might not appreciate it right away, but breathing air is really the way to go. Also congratulations to Michael; although his primary role was finished several months ago, it has already picked up again with a new job description. I find that the work after pregnancy is much harder than the work just prior to it.
I added a link to the previous Caption Contest entry, I somehow forgot to add it to the CGI code when changing the picture.
I think most of you know I write everything here, but I think that some of you don't know exactly what I mean when I say that I write everything here. It's not just the text you are reading here between the date markers. I mean that I type all the code by hand. If you use the "View Source" option in your web browser, you can see most of what I type. There is more than that since I converted to PHP, but it is all stuff that you are not supposed to see anyway, like the mechanism which determines the style you chose and both uses it and hides the style-chooser buttons from then on. You did select a style, right? If you pick one, it will stop displaying the little radio buttons.
Most people use web-publishing applications to design their pages, which is why their stuff looks professional and mine looks like something from the early days of the Web. I have to say that I know how to write HTML but I'm not a master of using tables to place things. I know how to use CSS but I generally use simple decorations and have to refer to the book when doing anything fancy like applying a non-scrolling watermark. I choose to keep things simple both because I like it and I don't spend a large enough amount of time studying the subjects required for mastery: XHTML, CSS and PHP. I do use perl-cgi as well, but only because I have not bothered to rewrite the Caption Contest and Bitch Barn in PHP.
I need to stop telling people I do computer support for a living. The immediately assume I know all about why their $299 desktop from eMachines won't run such-and-such. I do happen to know quite a bit about computers in general, mostly about the IBM pSeries (used to be called the RS/6000) with the IBM PC clone running Windows ranking a distant second. I don't mind helping people, really, but since the answer to their problem falls into a small number of unappealing categories, I really just feel bad after just about every encounter.
There are other things that could happen. For example I didn't even talk about when people don't have a broken computer, they just think it is very slow. John Milton once again supplies a great example since his computer is running slow, and he has not used one since Windows 98 was new, and most importantly he bought his box from eMachines.
He points out that his CPU should do so-and-so, and his video card should do this. I point out that your motherboard has a large impact on overall system performance, and that if you put name-brand parts on a crap-assed mainboard you are not doing anything other than wasting money. I also tell him that Nvidia's product numbering scheme "is da Debbil!". He has to look at the actual price of what he is buying relative to the overall video adapter market, since even though the names may be confusing he can count on always paying more money for a better card.
Hey, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, huh? I know more about getting computer games to run than most people, that's for sure, but as for general PC issues I'm really just guessing. Whenever my machine starts acting too weird, and definitely if it starts crashing, I just reinstall the thing. I don't really have to do this much since I now run Win XP, but in either case I manage to figure out a solution by clicking on all the options until I get it right.
In addition to the "format-n-reload" technique, which I admit is my favorite, I also use the "throw money at it" philosophy. The first approach is for software problems while the second is for hardware, both the no-workee ones as well as the cases when a $299 computer does not perform as well as someone's $2000 box.
Happy Earth Day! Be sure to do something to celebrate the significance of this date. If you know what I mean.
Time to write an update, but as is often the case, I don't really know what to talk about. I suppose that anything I could conceivably expose here will be of no interest at all to someone, so I may as well tell you all about my current, um, "projects".
The first thing that I am doing is enrolling in school. No, a different one again. This time it's Everglades U. and the coursework will largely be online. The part that is not can be done locally, more or less. Apparently class starts on May 3 but I have been so busy that I am not quite sure exactly what I need to do next. I'm so distracted by other things that I even started to fill out a financial aid form today. As long as I make above a C, Coke will reimburse me for it, so what was I thinking? Which reminds me to ask my boss for the form....
Sam is naturally a big part of my daily schedule. Not as big a part as he is for his mom, but I'm not able to take him to work with me. He has been sleeping a lot lately, probably trying to grow more. He must be sixteen pounds by now, but we have not bothered to weigh him lately.
Another fun thing is that the upstairs airconditioner has blown a fuse. Josh said he would get one but managed to lose the original fuse instead. I would not be terribly concerned about how hot it is upstairs except that my rig needs to be cool, so I'm going to need to get a few on my way home today.
I'm still cramming in time to play games, of course, in between trips out of town and to Osh Kosh. It was on a trip to a nice outdoor mall that I found Red Faction II for $17.95. It's not as cool as the first Red Faction mainly because the world feels more generic, but as for FPS games on the Xbox, it's nice. I'm also getting close to finishing Ratchet & Clank, only to find out yesterday that Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal is coming out this year. I will have to hurry up and get the second one: Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando.
I think I mentioned that I bought Far Cry, or rather I had Karen pick it up after calling me to see if I needed anything while she was at Sam's Club. Yeah, it's a FPS, and there is a lot of shooting in first-person perspective as you might suspect from the FPS comment. However, the execution of Far Cry is so far above something like Halo or Half-Life as to be simply amazing. I'm doing things in this game which are pretty fun even if I get gunned-down quite a lot. So far, even replaying from the checkpoints is not boring due to the numerous ways in which to reach the objectives. I conveniently have an example; tell me if this isn't cool.
The checkpoint has me starting off next to a ladder which leads to the top of this grounded World-War-II-era Japanese battleship. I really need to get off this ship, and my informant (the game version of a Greek chorus, I suppose) leads me to believe that there is an escape-boat up here. Turns out that the top of the ship is infested with mercenaries. These mercenaries have been hunting me down since I washed up on this otherwise-beautiful island; at this point I don't care why anymore.
A helicopter rises to greet me shortly after I get up the ladder. The guy in the side door is hosing me with bullets, and eventually I was able to take him out using my automatic rifle without a whole lot of blood loss on my part, but there was also some jerk manning a minigun on top of some scaffolding behind me who had to be dealt with. I managed to hide amongst some crates, leaning around to take a few shots at him before his high-caliber rounds punched me a new eye socket. Eventually I took him out and manned the gun myself. This worked great until I tried releasing the boat, a rubber boat secured by chains to an original esacpe-boat mooring. I realized I should have shot through the chains BEFORE I got into the boat.
Another try starting at the ladder. That minigun worked so well once I took it last time, I decided to make that my priority. I made my way to the deck and sprinted toward the minigun, unloading a clip at the merc behind it on the way. Naturally I missed him and had to climb the ladder and gun him down point-blank. Thankfully he didn't have a bead on me with the minigun, and I took the controls. I turned my attention to the helicopter. The bad part about manning the gun is that I could not hide from the chopper. I did manage to survive with just a tiny sliver of health; this time I didn't just kill the gunner and send the chopper limping away over the nearby island, I tore that machine into pieces. It plummeted into the shallow bay and presumably exploded. I didn't check it out, I had some mercs to pin down with a hail of gunfire.
The previous times, I had hidden amongst the cargo crates and taken quick, accurate shots at the approaching mercs. The key to accurate shots with an automatic weapon is to use short bursts; I find that aiming for the head increases your effectiveness even more. At times I must correct my aim quickly, but it is important to drag the burst across the head if possible. That worked pretty well, but only after I had dealt with the chopper and gunner, typically leaving me injured. I was hurt this time, however I was on top of a scaffolding behind several stacked crates with a long-range gun with unlimited ammunition. A much better position, no matter my health status. I didn't even have to explode any fuel tanks, but I did anyway. Don't need to let those mercs off too easy, not after the way they have been treating me.
This time I shot the chains before entering the raft. Once it had dropped, I leapt from the side of the ship and managed to land in water deep enough to avoid killing myself. I was free! Well, sort of. Can't get home in a rubber raft. There are more stories, but the point to note here is that there are many ways to accomplish your goals. I suppose I could have just jumped ship right off and tried to dislodge the raft from long-range, but then the chopper would have been after me anyway, and I might have shot the raft full of holes.
If anyone has to ask why I have prices of various precious metals listed on the front page, you don't really need to know. Sort of like asking "How much is that Lamborghini?"
The Chief Consultant of Armstrong Estate, Karen Armstrong, put forth a proposition this past weekend to change the name of "a web site" to something a little easier to remember. In the interest of unity within the administration, this proposition was adopted by the Information Disemination Entity within the Department of Diplomacy, along with a few other initiatives in the departments of Budget and Infrastructure. If you bookmarked this site and got incredibly angry at the vague name, rejoice at the opportunity to delete that bookmark and make another. Huzzah!
Speaking of the Department of Infrastructure, which is probably a lot like the United States' Department of Energy aside from the size and complexity, the DoI Worker's Union reports that the proposed upgrades to the Armstrong Estate will require additional funding to complete. Having used the majority of the DoI budget on upgrading the Estate's supercomputer, an agreement has been reached to use money from the Department of Budget's general fund in order to acquire a DVD recorder. Currently the DoI Worker's Union is researching technology that will fit within the budget and working on a design which will integrate the new device into the existing infrastructure without any loss of services.
The long weekend has come and gone. I didn't do anything related to either Jesus or fertility, but I did go to Lake Burton with Karen, Sam, Zuby and my mother-in-law. It was not a horrible time, in fact it was about average as far as lake-trips go for me. I didn't get into much trouble, really, and the trouble I did get into was just for moving too slowly on Friday. Since the timetable was not violated, I managed to avoid anything serious.
Sam was a great distraction, too. He's not a huge fan of car rides, at least when he's awake. It's really the car seat he has a problem with, but since he can't talk we didn't think much of this until the ride back. I mean, we knew he didn't like being in the car seat for long periods but we didn't know just how much. It was unavoidable, but at least he helped keep the conversation away from dangerous subjects. The topic of car-buying was only brought up briefly on the way home, although it was embedded in a discussion of the direction of my career.
Even at just three months, Sam's personality is really evident. Sure, a lot of it is basically the stuff that all babies do, but I can see it. The best part is that he has been an overall happy person since we have gotten his acid reflux under control. He's grabbing things, although his control is pretty bad and lots of times it is just wild slapping. He's much better at babbling, holding entire conversations in his weird baby-language.
Sam has recently started eating baby food here and there. I thought this was probably a good idea, but now I am thinking we probably got off on the wrong foot by starting him on apple and banana. I can't see the boy getting interested in eating peas or broccoli after a lifetime of eating formula and applesauce. I suppose we will just have to deal with it when it comes down to getting him onto solid food. The good news is that he is much better at eating from a spoon these days.
I am putting up some information passed along by a friend and reader from his sister-in-law who is helping the Coalition rebuild Iraq. Find it above the Favorite Reader. You hear a lot of crap on the news, and I'm hoping to provide a view that you usually don't get to see because, really, who cares if Iraqis have cell phones? I submit that decent people do, but I also submit that smart, decent people don't contribute as much to TV ratings as stupid ignoramuses.
I'm not trying to get all political. It makes me too mad to dwell on it. I could tell you about my computer problems, but we all know that no one likes that stuff except me. I'll just say that I had another upgrading adventure and leave it alone until my geek gland juices me up to tell the story.
I get an email from John Milton yesterday, and as if that in itself is not weird enough, his email asks me if I have read anything about World of WarCraft. A ridiculous question, to be sure, but it also is an early indication that he, and therefore I, will be jumping off of the FFXI ship when WoW comes out. I know that FFXI is really cool, but I also know people who have both played FFXI and are currently in the beta test of WoW, and from what I gather there is really no comparison. I'm even more excited about WoW now that I have gotten some time in FFXI.
So what has happened to the other games I have on the docket?
If you watched either of the linked movies for Far Cry, you will understand that I have really been hooked by FFXI.
I updated the Caption Contest as well.
I'm in big trouble. Karen had said that Final Fantasy XI looked cool, and why wasn't I playing that, and maybe she would play. I'm pretty sure she won't play, but it does show her interest in the game. My only excuse is that I know my weaknesses and have purposely kept myself ignorant of the game... much like I was doing with World of WarCraft, but that's another story.
Enter John Milton. He now has internet access again, and I suppose he remembers how to operate the internet but who cares really? He calls me up last week, just prior to my hospitalization, and asks me which game he should buy: Samurai Jack or Final Fantasy XI? He assured me that he knew FFXI was an online game, so I told him that he should get that one. Well, of course he wanted me to play with him, and so I picked up the box at the Hiram EB.
First thing, let me say that I have played several name-brand online games. I have played EQ enough to render a sound opinion on it. You will probably hear FFXI compared to EQ quite a bit. These people are morons. EQ, unless something stupendous has happened since the Planes of Power expansion, cannot lick the jock strap of FFXI. I know that I'm just now level 2 in a single job, but I know quality when I play it. I could type all day about the ways in which FFXI conquers the ass of all other online games, but I won't. If you are someone who liked EQ well enough but decided you would wait five or ten years for the technology or design to evolve, drop your Warhammer figurines and go buy this game.
This means I'm in trouble because now FFXI has its claws in my brain and I'm just a ticking time-bomb of dog-house, waiting to explode undone chores and neglected family members all over the place. I have already forgotten entirely how to do dishes; it's only a matter of time before the divorce.
Karen does use the phrase "You're in the dog house..." sometimes, which always makes me feel like I'm in some sitcom from the 1960's.
The hospitalization. I seem to have contracted a stomach virus, probably from Sam, which would explain his various ailments during that week. It came on me pretty quick, and after an hour or two of stuff coming out both ends of me, Karen took me to the hospital. That turned out to be a great idea since I had become extremely dehydrated. Aside from the sandpapery mouth, the big clue was pooping out a gallon of water in one sitting. They put some stuff in me and sent me packing, no longer thirsty but pretty weak. That was Thursday night, and I am much better but not quite 100%.
My work today crashed and burned, now I'm waiting on someone else to fix things. So I guess I can do a short update.
Too bad I can't think of anything entertaining to write about.
I got an email from Ellis College regarding my inquiry into getting an online mathematics degree, but it is a form letter. I suppose I should wait to see if this turns into anything important, but I'm tempted to just go ahead and send a message to University of Phoenix about the business management thing. I guess it couldn't hurt to wait another few days?
I have been thinking hard about getting another sound card for my computer, but someone mentioned that the onboard sound of my motherboard is superior to the stinky SBLive! that I had been using. Basically I could get a free upgrade by moving some wires. I'm not sure that the Dolby Surround encoding is working properly, but I don't need that crap anyway. I just need to get some sort of sound out of my rear speakers, and since I have removed the SBLive! and turned on the onboard sound, that is exactly what I get.
Apparently I am now down to having just one adapter card in my machine: the ATi 9600 XT, which is a piece of crap. It's not that I bought a really cheap ATi card, it's that ATi seems to be on the ass-end of software support. Maybe it's not ATi's fault, but Nvidia doesn't seem to have these problems. Too late to do anything about that, I have already bought the card. Next in line for an upgrade is the CPU. I'm running an Athlon 1700+ right now, and while I don't have any glaring performance issues these days, thanks mostly to having 1.5GB of RAM, the newer CPUs are getting cheaper all the time. They should run cooler, too, so I won't have to worry so much about heat dissipation.
First off, I have put up a new picture in the Caption Contest. Don't have too much fun, my internet-insurance won't cover personal injury.
I thought yesterday was Wednesday for some reason. Probably because my brain is like pudding. Today is really St. Patrick's Day, so I think I am going to have to do my duty by wearing green and drinking.
I found out today that the company-discounted tickets to see David Bowie at Chastain are $100. I want to go see him and I really don't know if I will ever get such a chance again, seeing as how he's getting old and plays across the whole world. One of the other things from last weekend that changed a bit is a talk Karen had, which I listened to, about how I need to stop thinking of myself all the time and put my efforts toward Sam. I don't think that I am overly focused on my own happiness, but you know how it is when arguing with your wife: you lose. I just don't put a lot of effort into arguments anymore, although this time I was pretty irritated that she doesn't understand the general layout of the things I want. I might talk about that later but right now it just makes me seethe thinking about it.
Anyway, I am going to have to do some stuff to keep myself entertained to a degree, naturally, but I'm going to have to start working on doing more stuff to further the good of the family. This is where the new lower standards in the realm of education come in. I know that it is silly to have a high standard if it prevents me from actually obtaining ANY bachelor's degree, while lowering it will allow me to get something, anything to put on my resume. So that's what I'm doing. I have not gotten a reply from that one school about the mathematics degree, and while I think that could be because all schools are a morass of bureacracy, it could also mean that I need to go for a business management degree instead.
The business management track is not quite so ludicrous as you might think. Karen also said in her monologue from last weekend that she would probably need me to take over her mother's job at Mc's Painting. I suppose that would be a pretty nice job to have, but I'd need an education on running a business first. I first offered to estimate jobs, since that seemed to be something I could handle, but it looks like I'm in line to be the office manager. This will probably mean that I would also be the IT manager, since right now it's Karen and she doesn't like it too much.
I'm supposed to put some more pictures of the house up. I'll get that done eventually. I really should write a program to generate web pages which just display a list of pictures, but I don't know if that will be harder or easier than just whipping up a page whenever I need it.
Happy St. Patrick's Day. Go get drunk.
I have had some revelations and mindset-changes this past weekend, those moments in which I manage to give up some of my stubbornly-championed causes in favor of more palatable ones. There was also a big embarassing milestone from this past weekend: I got sore muscles from two sets of bowling. I don't care is you laugh at that, I am personally too mortified at my own decrepitude to care. I found some solace in two things: the Hiram O'Charley's stocks Newcastle just for me, and Foamy is back. His bar in Clearwater, FL, was the victim of a new anti-smoking law which makes it illegal to smoke inside establishments which made over 10% of their revenue from food. That basically covers pretzels, I think. He's back and thinking of opening something in Atlanta once he builds up capital, but until then he gets to serve me drinks.
What? The paradigm-shifts? Right. I guess the biggest one is that I have abandoned my illusions of ever getting a real bachelor's degree and have begun looking into getting one of those online degrees. I have not yet let go of all my standards, however, and am looking for something semi-respectable. Currently I have a request out for a school which is offering an online mathematics degree, which would suit me wonderfully considering the vast number of mathematics courses I have gotten credit for over the years. I am also trying to find a university (or just any credited organization) that offers a degree in Japanese. Why start over completely in pursuit of a bachelor's degree? I really want to learn Japanese and am confident that I will never do so without some sort of motivation, and if the coursework is online I should be able to get it out of the way relatively quickly. The way things are looking, I think I'm lucky to find that one degree. I am still looking around in American schools for the most part, though, so perhaps I'll turn up something nice in some other country.
In fact, apparently China has a very large online-university initiative, and it is tempting to shift from Japanese to Chinese language. I'm going to make sure that there is no recourse in the JP and mathematics paths before I change to ZH.
Now, in case this whole education thing doesn't work out, I have made preparations by running a cleaning disk through my PS2 and Xbox. I have not tested the Xbox to see if those bothersome dirty-disk errors are gone, but I will eventually, probably by getting my blood pressure dangerously high with Prince of Persia. I also set back my game-timetable by starting over with Final Fantasy X, since when I checked my save files I noticed the newest one was dated February 2002. As if that wasn't enough, I found Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus and one of the Harvest Moon games in a bargain bin. They will sit around with Metroid: Zero Mission until I get a few moments to try them out. I'm hoping that Karen takes an interest in Harvest Moon, but really I'm not counting on it, no matter how cute the cows are.
Karen, always looking out for me, has pointed out that I was right when I said Katie Couric is the Devil. Thanks, sweetie!
It was about 67 degrees F when I got to work today. You'd never know that it snowed last Thursday. I supposed that other places have such crazy weather, such as San Diego, but there can't be too many.
Sam is better, recovering from a cold that he contracted at the pediatrician just about the time we got his acid reflux under control. Karen has been working on the pictures, so go take a look if you have not already.
I have gotten tired of my crappy Xbox and demoted it. The component video cable for my GameCube arrived yesterday so I promoted the Cube up to high-definition, and that gave me a great excuse to play Metroid Prime in 480p mode, but not 16:9.
I also succumbed to temptation and bought the Dungeon Siege expansion pack Legends of Aranna. It has some nice improvements but they are only available when playing the new map. The most annoying one of these is the ability to save quest status in multiplayer. It is very annoying to have to do a wad of quests or hold onto some large stone if I want to go into the maljin realm, and I was hoping to fix that problem. Too bad. The multiplayer quests in the new map are pretty nice, though, so it's not a big deal.
Now I need to download the new DSTK, in case I ever get around to finishing my masterpiece map.
Stuck at work again.
I know it's been a long time. Been raising a baby, you know. Karen has been working on a web page with pictures, if you did not know.
Sam is doing pretty well lately. Karen is another story, but last night she finally relented and let me take care of the boy without her supervision. The funny thing is that I have already gotten used to his schedule and am able to wake up every two hours for a 45-60 minute feeding with little ill-effect on my day-to-day functioning. I have not been able to convince Karen of this, perhaps because she really needs something to worry or get angry about. In fact, I have been playing Horizons much more than I did before I became a father in the eyes of the government. I think I have been a father since conception, but I suspect G. W. Bush disagrees.
I have completed Wind Waker and started a new game, even. The second time through, you get the Deluxe Picto-Box from the start, and you keep your neat islander clothes you start with. There might be some other things, but I have not made it off Outset Island yet. I finished Luigi's Mansion as well, and have made decent progress through the second time, but of course I'm not made of time.
You might think this is the worst time to buy games, and in fact it is. I have to share the blame here, however. Karen was shopping at Sam's Club to help herself feel better, which I was totally behind, and she decided to buy a couple games for me: Eternal Ring and Xenosaga. I have only just gotten into both.
I have also done a few things on this web site, which you will notice if you poke around the menu. I have not updated the caption contest, of course. I'd like to do something with this site that is technically interesting, so maybe I'll redo those Perl CGI progs in PHP. Who knows?
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and of course I have gotten something for K. As usual, she sneaks something on me which makes my gift look ill-planned, but my defense here is that it is impossible for a holiday to arrive without Karen reminding me of my duties. In the end, it is far, far better an idea to do what she wants, and I can't really be faulted if she tells me about it well in advance. Trust me, this is much better than being told not to get anything and having to come up with something on my own.
I can't tell what my gift is, even though she knows that I have something. She found out because she was foisting one of her CDs on me in my truck, and she was going to put my CD into the armrest-storage bin, but since that was where the item was, I put my elbow on it and made up some story about losing the case. Naturally she didn't buy it. I can, however, tell what she got me: a nice card and a heart-shaped box of candy. Nice and traditional.
Since we were on our way to Target when she discovered she was not allowed inside the armrest, I decided that no real harm could come from buying her card while we were there. I think I left it in the kitchen. I really need to write something heartfelt in there before tomorrow night.
It's Friday, which means I can get a gyro in the cafeteria. So I did. It's probably the best thing they make, depending on your tastes.
Last night we tried a trick several people have suggested: I put 1/4 teaspoon of rice cereal into Sam's formula. He can eat 3 ounces when he is hungry, but of course this does not last him very long. I fed him between 2300 and 0000 last night, and it took so long because the cereal was clogging the nipple. I opened it a bit more with a safety pin, after which he finished pretty quickly. He probably went to sleep at 0100, and was still sleeping hard at 0730. I think we are winning.
Despite that, I felt like crap this morning... moreso than usual. I hope that it is just stress and not sleep deprivation, because I can do something about the stress. I usually get a headache when deprived of caffeine, so it is entirely possible that I am suffering from a gaming withdrawal. I consume large quantities of coffee at all hours of the day, but we're talking about games here, not just some mildly-addictive chemical. I hope that is not what this is, because I really have other responsibilities at the moment. Maybe some Magic Rice Cereal will quell the banshee and I can whip out Prince of Persia again.
Speaking of games and a whip, my friend Belkster has obtained an Xbox. I'm sure his other half was against such a thing, being a traditional woman and what not, but he came through. I suspect that since she is having a baby, he realizes that his time is short and since she is going to be angry at him all the time anyway, he may as well get yelled at for a good reason. I'm going to have to suggest he try out Knights of the Old Republic when I see him tomorrow.
I'm still waiting on an IP address for my server, so I decided to work on the site a bit. Many of you might not be aware that I use this site as a place to store information so that I can access it from different places, and such is the case with the new section on Horizons Information. Of course, astute readers will remember my other pages which never really took off, like my journals for my Camelot druid and my Morrowind character. That's fine because, as I just said, this site is mostly for my use: to learn various languages and store information that I find interesting. A very few of you might remember that this project began as "prototype web site" before I started putting EverQuest smithing information on it and created "a web site V1R0M0". I think that I have come halfway by modernizing the place somewhat... notice I don't call this "a web site V7R1M2". Feel free to abuse my policies in the Bitch Barn. I might read it before February.
Long time, yes. A few of you might not know that Samuel James was born on January 5, which also happens to be my birthday. He's very healthy and strong, and Karen is doing pretty well for someone in her condition. She had a C-section and her staples came out on the twelfth. I will post pictures as soon as I accumulate a few, and as soon as I make some room on this server. We do have quite a few pictures but the digital camera refuses to talk to my PC, so we will have to scan some photographs using Karen's new scanner.
I didn't get Karen a whole lot, but I did get her more than the new bath robe she wanted. I also got her the Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD, which she knew about because I gave her a peek at Best Buy. I also got her a scanner, and she knew about that one because it was shipped in the retail box. Everything else I have ordered from www.newegg.com has come in some sort of overpackaging even if it was a retail item, such as the motherboards and my new Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT. I ship things to Karen's office because I don't trust the UPS and FedEx guys to not hit my stone columns at the road-end of my driveway, plus they would probably drive off the gravel a bit and get mud everywhere. It's a bit worse than that, but only a little, because Karen didn't see the scanner arrive. Her mom, though, seems to have quite an interest in the various items I order, so she goes into Karen's office and says "Did Gary order a scanner?" Karen, of course, returned a blank look, and somewhere in there they both realized that I had ordered it as a present. Oh well.
I think I got her one more thing but I really can't remember what it was... so on to my stuff. Karen has it easy when buying gifts for me. I like a large variety of things, but there are a few broad categories which are good for me. Also I do a great job of not purchasing things that I want, believe it or not. Finally, I can't remember things as a general rule. I had talked about the Alien Quadrology DVD box at some point, and I think I remember Karen not being too secretive about ordering it for me, but since that was last summer I really can't be sure. Anyway, I got that box which has two versions of each movie and one DVD with extras, totalling nine discs. It is really cool, and Karen even watched the Director's Cut of Alien with me.
She also got me a great picture book with fascinating aerial views of Earth. There was also a "Beers of America" sampler with two bottles each of four beers modeled after various American brews. Then there was Viewtiful Joe, which Karen doesn't like at all, and Beyond Good & Evil, which is loved by all. From other people, I got some more lounging clothes, a Jeff Foxworthy desk calendar, a flashlight, the Tenacious D DVD, and probably other stuff which I forget about at the moment, which will angrify the people who gave the gifts. I love you all, I just have a bad memory.
Speaking of memory, I installed the new RAM in my rig and now have 1.5 GB, which is 1536 MB to those of you who are not sure what a GB is. I can remember my first computer's hard drive was only 40 MB.
When I installed the RAM, which should be a simple maneuver, two things happened at once. Multiple simultaneous failures are actually more common in computers than you might think, as are the failures associated with rebooting. I try to keep my machine on all the time in order to reduce the wear on my hardware, but since I am running Windows I really can't avoid reboots. In this case, I had a graphics card blow and the mainboard BIOS reset itself to defaults in a few places.
It took me a while to figure out what was wrong with the BIOS, but I figured out the video card failure soon enough. Those of you keeping score at home might remember that I got my GeForce 4200 Ti for $50 because the fan made a horrible noise, and you might also remember that it stopped at some point. At some later point, apparently the fan stopped rotating altogether, so the card died due to overheating. Luckily I found my Gainward GeForce 3 and was able to get underway again, only to find out that my rig was not booting. I put RAM in and I took RAM out and even called Crucial to make sure that my sticks were compatible. They were, but I noticed some weirdness in BIOS. I set a few items, verified the boot list, confirmed power output, and managed to boot. Unfortunately my CPU was reporting incorrectly, but some dingling with the FSB and multiplier fixed that. I started up Horizons.
The quality suffered a bit from the GeForce 3, but not as much as I thought it would. I was still bothered, though, and a quick glance at a review on Anandtech showed the ATI Radeon 9600 XT was about twice as fast as the GeForce 4200 Ti, so I ordered one. Real-world results were not as sharp as I thought it would be, once I had the new one in, but I have started some tweaking which should improve both quality and performance in Horizons. Once I finish tweaking the 9600 XT, I will proceed to modify some parameters of Horizons itself.
I have not had a lot of time to work on this stuff. I spend most of my free time with Sam. He's not very complicated but he is unpredictable and pretty much unreadable since I have not started to understand his various cries. He is fascinating, though, and he makes a lot of weird faces. It doesn't even bother me when he is screaming his head off, and Karen is amazed at how calm I am when trying various baby-soothing techniques. Honestly, I'm amazed as well. I seem to have undergone some sort of mystical transcendence into a father, quietly gaining various superpowers like Immunity to Gross-outs, Resistance to Sonic Attack, and Unbelievable Patience for Irrational Behavior. It's really quite strange, yet it doesn't feel unnatural... which just makes it more weird.
It's about that time. You know what I'm talking about: the time when your wife starts nagging you to take down all those decorations that she nagged you to put up about a month ago. Yeah, it's been a whole month since you did that, even though it seems like a short week.
Before that fun starts, I think you might get some sort of present if it turns out that you were a good boy all year. I suppose I was good because there are some unidentified presents for me under the tree. I asked for a couple of things but there are a few extra, so I'm in for a surprise or two. It does really help Karen that I cannot remember things from day-to-day, much less several months later, but of course it hurts her in getting presents herself. In fact, I don't remember what I got for her aside from one particular item that was drilled into my brain. I hope I got her more than one present.
I have discovered the joy of hair wax. Well, I guess it's wax, perhaps sculpting cream. I have two jars which Karen bought for me after I came home from my last haircut. I told the girl that Karen wanted my hair to look like Brendan Frasier in The Mummy, and it turns out she is a total Brendan fan. She told me that his trick was using pomade, so she used some on me. She also did this neat trick where she slapped her hands together such that she created some sort of pomade-web when she pulled them apart and let the filaments drop across my head. I don't think I have pomade, but I'm not going to try that no matter if I do or not.
I may as well post this here since Karen will find out eventually. But before the confession, a bit of backstory.
I read a bit on GameSpot about the new massively-multiplayer game Horizons: Empire of Istaria and how it had great crafting and a dynamic world and blah blah... anyway it looked appealing even if I had sworn off these types of games and cancelled my hardly-used account in Dark Age of Camelot. I wasn't planning on buying it, but it looked awesome and I mentioned it to Karen. She didn't really want to hear me yap about it so she said "Just buy it," and there was no turning back. DAoC is not a bad game at all, but it is centered around large-scale warfare between players, something which requires a great deal of comittment or at least planning. My schedule does not allow such constant play, plus I get bored at times, even with DAoC's very-interesting combat. I played a valewalker, which is probably one of the most interesting classes to play, but sometimes you get tired of just killing things, and besides that I really just have one desire in an online fantasy game: to be a blacksmith. I tried to be a blacksmith in Ultima Online, but being constantly killed by other players was a real wet-blanket on my party. I tried to be a blacksmith in EverQuest, but just like everything in EQ, this required me to fight monsters constantly just to get the money and materials, and just like everything in EQ it was very, very difficult. DAoC also requires monster-fighting to a degree, and since the point of the game is to overcome the other player teams you have to expect a lot of combat training.
Horizons has no player-versus-player component, which is great, in my opinion. It helps keep the bothersome teens out, as does the concentration on crafting. If you read some message boards, and I don't as a rule, you will see some dumbasses complaining about how they can't get any loot to drop from monsters. Truth is, all loot is stuff like iron ore and animal hide which has no value to the average loot whore who has been banned from EQ. Each piece of equipment aside from your crappy starting stuff is made by a player. Even the magical spells are all player-crafted.
Crafting itself is also fun for me. I get to explore, and since my character does not have any fighting skills to speak of, I do a lot of sneaking and creeping. I have to work on my mining skill in order to collect iron ore fast enough that the skeleton scout does not see me, and after I get the materials I still like the item-creation process. Not only is that great, the consignment system makes unloading my shoddy wares on an unsuspecting public very easy, and I find myself gaining money at a surprising pace. I might be able to afford a house in a few months, or maybe less once I start making better equipment for richer players.
What? The confession? Oh, right. No, no, that was not an intentional diversion. Not at all. This does relate to Horizons. You see, I installed it on Karen's laptop so that I could play downstairs. She does not like me being away from her, neither does she like being in my office. This is what had originally steered me toward playing console games rather than PC games, but then the exposed mother-lode of great console games released this past year or two really sealed the deal. I had not installed anything on K's laptop because, frankly, the games I play would look and run like crap on it. I did not care so much about Horizons; even though it looks great, I have to really drop down the graphical settings in order to play it properly, and it STILL looks great even with less than half of the full-blown settings. Also it runs like crap no matter what, so as long as I could get in and play I was happy. I noticed that the prog loaded a bit faster, possibly due to the even-lower graphical settings, but it also shut down in a fraction of the time it took on my rig.
One look at Cacheman told the story: Horizons had managed to consume ~660MB of RAM on the laptop. My rig only has 512MB of RAM, so part of the app was surely paged out to disk. I knew what I had to do, and seeing that a 512MB DDR DIMM matching my one existing part number was a mere $69.95, I had to get one. I fact, I ordered two. Once those magic-sticks arrive, which should be soon thanks to free two-day shipping, I will be able to regain the status of Top Rig in the house. I don't know what else might get better when running 1536MB RAM, but I'll surely find out.
Two in a row, I'm on fire. I hope that everyone is enjoying the Photoshop Gallery. There just isn't much that is funnier than putting people's heads on other people's bodies.
The current show in The Armstrong Gallery of Art is "Beards of the World", so please feel free to submit any bearded-friends' pictures for possible inclusion in the collection.
Four more weeks before Sam arrives, ten days before Christmas, and one week before I am on-call. It's the inexorable march of time.
Updated the caption. No picture of Saddam, that one is too easy and I don't think it would be conducive to captioning. I have other plans for that one.
Today is the day we celebrate the deal struck with Subway whereby they are now a Coke-only shop. Unfortunately, I was just a few minutes late in getting downstairs and the hallways were jammed with people in line to get a free sandwich. I decided to skip it and get my usual, but after going upstairs I saw that the cafeteria decided to take a day off. I got a double-espresso since the coffee shop was still open. Maybe it will settle down after 12:30 and I can get near the joint.
I have heard the complaints. I will update this place as soon as possible. In fact today there is a new front-page picture, which will have to tide you over until I change the caption picture.
At first this month seemed to crawl by. It should be over one month since Halloween and yet it is not even Thanksgiving. This week, however, things have shifted into high-gear and it's even more bothersome that I can't complete these tasks quickly because I remember all the extra time I had last week. It's even worse than you imagine: I brought down the four bins of Christmas decorations last night so they can join the new decorations. I think Karen can handle that, and she seems to be feeling much better, so I will concentrate on other things. These things include installing the shelves that she has wanted since before we moved in and moving the leftover construction materials into the basement. This should not be too difficult, even though I have to go in to work Sunday night.
Karen is pretty anxious for me to get this stuff done this weekend, but she still decided to buy Monster Rancher 4 for me. She says that it is thanks for taking care of her; fortunately for me, she does not know that I would do it without a material reward.
I know that this company has been laying off people all over the place, but for some reason the parking deck seems to be getting more and more crowded. What's the deal with that? The silver lining of layoffs should be that I get to park closer to the building, or at least in the parking deck adjacent to my building. Somehow, Coke manages to even take away that dubious pleasure.
In a similar vein, The Company has just implemented a new recycling program. They had a big celebratory kickoff last week, which I avoided because there was a guy dressed as a recycling bin holding a microphone. I find out yesterday that it's not really optional, thanks to the nasty-gram I got from the cleaning staff. The note explained that my trash can was in violation of the recycling rules, but it did not explain exactly how. Perhaps there was an aluminum can or plastic bottle underneath the styrofoam, but I don't have time to sort my garbage. I tossed a couple more cans in, just to make sure that it didn't go anywhere. I'm thinking about adding half a tuna salad sandwich to the mix.
Two things are bothering me right now. First is the fact that I am still getting some water leakage around my basement door, even though my father-in-law did a great caulk job on it yesterday, and second is the absence of Monster Rancher 4.
Undoubtably, one of those is more important than the other, and of course I can't do a whole lot about either one at the moment, so I should just relax. Otherwise I'll go into another Scott-Rakestraw-induced fit of stress, or perhaps start imagining what sort of monsters I could breed from my coworkers.
I am going to move my email address into my trap for email harvesters so that even if one of them manages to get it, they will also get a lot more bogus ones. Don't worry, I completely rewrote the program in PHP and now it is much faster and easier on the eyes. It might also be more tempting to the harvesters since it does not resemble the original program at all. It even uses your style preference instead of that hard-coded "New Black" you get in the Perl-CGI pages, such as the Caption Contest. I have a lot of patience, but the amount of spam is getting enormous. If not for POPFile, I would have already retreated from society... or at least the electronic version of society.
I think there must be some sort of sale going on at the mall. I have been seeing a lot of blue-glass dolphins hanging from the rearview mirrors of a lot of cars. This morning, in fact, I saw three dolphins in two cars. At least these people are not hanging CDs from their mirrors anymore. I suppose that I can't really say much against these people, since I am one of those people that put those dorky antenna-toppers on, and I even change out based on the holiday. For example, during October I swapped my usual American-flag Mickey Head for a ghost-with-mouse-ears Mickey Head. I also have both a Santa-hat-wearing Mickey Head and a red-nose-and-antlers Mickey Head. For next March, I am saving my green-tophat-and-white-beard Mickey Head in order to properly commemorate St. Patrick's Day.
It looks like readership is up slightly after my mass-mailing. For those of you new to this crap, please direct all complaints to the Bitch Barn. If you have something to say at all, nasty or otherwise, that would be the place to do it. If you want to help out, you can see about adding your special brand of humor to the Caption Contest. Most of the other stuff on this site would only be of interest to me, or perhaps someone equally dorky.
Karen found out that I got a speeding ticket this week. I got the ticket last week, and I was going to tell her, just later. It's not enough that Cobb County has to be so picky as to pull someone over for going 62 in a 45-mph zone, they also have to mail a letter to my PO box, and that is how Karen found out. I can't very well avoid Cobb in my commute since it lies directly between my house and my office, so I suppose I will just have to remember to stick to my number-one rule: never do more than ten over the limit.
John Milton reclaimed his copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic last weekend, freeing me up to start playing Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Yes, yes, I know I should be playing Final Fantasy Tactics, or finishing Metroid Prime, or Wind Waker, or Luigi's Mansion, or playing Metroid Fusion. But hey, Eternal Darkness is cool. It is also very creepy and scary, particularly now that I am playing a character who has, due to too many encounters with horrible monsters, gone quite insane. I wondered for a while just what sort of visions and hallucinations would befall a character who lost too much sanity, and now I know. I won't ruin anything, but you should trust me when I say it is cool, creepy and at times disturbing since you don't always know immediately that you are having a hallucination.
I had planned to start up a gallery of sorts to showcase my forays into the PhotoShop realm. I don't know anything about PS, but since I have access to the corporate license for PhotoShop 7 and since I have a nice picture of Patty with a full beard, why not kill some time putting his head on other people's bodies? However bold and saucy that idea, I have been derailed by another timekiller for when I am waiting on some work to show up and I have gotten tired of reading the Teach Yourself C book: I am making a map for Dungeon Siege. I know that the expansion will be released either this week or next week, but I had planned to do this for a while, being stopped by the impotence of my previous laptop. Now that I have an IBM T40 with 512MB of RAM, I am able to run not only the Siege Editor but also Siege Max, which is basically a Dungeon-Siege-only, stripped-down version of 3D Studio Max. I'm still learning SE right now, so don't be asking me to make new models for DS anytime soon. Who knows if I will ever put together a map, but this is something I will be able to get more into than that mod for Morrowind I was working on. I was really working on that dilligently until I realized that I didn't have much of an idea of the storyline, and just creating a dungeon in Morrowind is rather silly. Dungeon Siege is really one big dungeon, very much like Diablo, so I don't have to worry so much about my lack of inspiration plotwise. It still allows me to add things such as non-interactive cutscenes, should I become inspired in some way.
Regarding John Milton and particularly Brittany... she seems much better suited to him than his descriptions led me to believe. I'm sure he thinks she is some sort of glowing angel, and she is quite pretty, but it's not like she is Elizabeth Hurley or some other globally-appealing girl. Turns out they have not had sex, which makes me think that John must really like her, but then she does not have an aversion to oral sex so John isn't really acting out of character. We think she is not so bad, but also that she has not decided who she wants to be, so we are not going to invest too much emotional effort into her right away. Maybe in a few months.
Today I have a special treat. In sort-of-honor of Veterans Day, I have a nice story from The United Arab Emirates, as told by one of our men on the USS Enterprise. The names have been changed to protect the engaged.
OK,
Here's the rest of the story for an audience that doesn't include
parents or grandparents. At that bar Scarlett's, I was with three other
guys, Butch Manson, Duke Vegas, and just Frederik. There was much drinking
done, and I had the Irish Car bomb that I've been looking forward to since
early September. For the uninitiated, an Irish Car Bomb is a glass of
Guiness with a shot of Bailey's Irish Creme dropped in (shot glass and all),
that you have to drink before the creme curdles, which means fast. Irish
Car Bomb evenings are always ones to remember, although remembering can be a
problem. I had to explain it to the waitress, who clearly thought I was a
jackass for wanting such a thing. We were sitting at a table near the bar,
and all noticed two attractive women sitting at the bar, a redhead and a
brunette. Everybody harassed me for a second to go talk to them, and in
characteristic Bill fashion, I chickened out. My friend Butch,
man-of-action that he is (at least when he's been drinking), immediately
took up the cause and went and started a conversation with the brunette.
Well, there I was feeling guilty for letting Butch do the work, and
watching him deal with two exotic foreign women at once, and really starting
to feel that car bomb, and noticing that the redhead looked bored, so I
decided to do my part and help out. They were both a little drunk and very
Russian. I was talking more to the redhead, Helena. Clever guy that I am I
bought her a white russian (again, for the uninitiated that's 1/4 vodka, 1/4
Kahlua and 1/2 creme, tastes like dirty chocolate milk), she'd never heard
of that and thought that it was very funny. Well, 15 minutes and a white
russian later, I was invited back to the house. I didn't really know if I
just had more game than I thought, or if she was drunk, or maybe she just
liked Americans. With every ounce of willpower that I had, I told her that
I had to go back to the boat, or I'd get in trouble, and maybe I would see
her later. I had duty the next day and wasn't authorized overnight liberty,
regardless. I went back to the table and told my sad story, and Frederik
pointed out that he and I were alternating on 'Feed Control Watch' the next
day. If he took first watch, then I could safely show up around noon, and
no one would be the wiser. There was a tiny risk of someone looking for me
in the morning, but everyone at the table agreed that it was a worthwhile
risk. So Frederik and Butch, who both have fiancee's at home, got a cab and
left, while Duke and I decided to stay out. I went back to Helena and told
her that Duke and I were staying out, boat be damned. She told me about
this other bar on the 51st floor, and said I should meet her up there.
Well, Duke and I couldn't find our way to the 51st floor. Apparently, a big
chunk of it is private. By this point it was pretty late, and we could
either go back then and make it on time with no risk at all, or keep looking
for this damn bar, maybe not find it, and go back frustrated to face
disciplinary action. So, we went back.
Well, the next day I found out that my other friend Jeff had gone to
Scarlett's the night before we did. He and some friends got to drinking
with some Australian guy, who recommended that they all go to this bar on
the 51st floor that was supposed to be chock full of RUSSIAN HOOKERS!!!
Now, I'm not really a hooker kind of guy, but I was a little drunk, and I
had been at sea for the previous sixty somethin' days, and the Navy really
hasn't been kind to my love life at all. Had we found the 51st floor, and I
let my carnal desires get the better of me, when I showed up the next day at
noon, the boat would've already been gone. That was the night that they had
the liberty recall because of the helicopters, and we left the next morning.
Me and Duke would've been up shit creek without a paddle, stranded in Jebel
Ali.
Well, thank fate for not tempting a poor drunk sailor with a bar
full of Russian hookers.
OK Bye,
Bill
One of the things you have to deal with when you work for a company as large as The Coca-Cola Company is the ever-present global mindset. A perfect example is the web-based course I am taking today which will educate me on the details of the new Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Essentially this lets me know what the new federal law means and, most importantly, helps cover Coke's ass if I were to one day bribe a foreign official. I suppose it could happen.
Out of class at last, probably going to go home a little early since I don't have anything to do right now. Karen doesn't like for me to leave work early, but she does want me to get home early. I have not quite figured out the mechanics of that, but so far my research indicates this will at least require some very fast driving.
John Milton will be spending Saturday at the Armstrong Estates Resort, and he is bringing along his new girl. Yes, the unthinkable has happened: the pretty, educated, married-to-a-successful-man Bronwyn ended up breaking it off with John and moving away to greener pastures, supposedly in Huntsville. It was back to Stephanie for John, at least for a few weeks, before he met Brittany. Apparently she is a 20-year-old virgin with breast implants and a body from a Nordic Track commercial, and it should be no surprise that John was the one that managed to charm her virginity away. I'm pretty gullible, but even I don't believe that one.
Speaking of dummies, Josh has moved back to San Diego. I think this time he might break it off with Gabe and come back to Atlanta, but you know what they say: breaking up is hard to do. Plus, Gabe is a very pretty man with a great career and lots of money. Josh would be stupid to throw that away. If he comes back to Hiram, he will have to work for a living instead of being a housewife.
Patrick should be graduating and walking in February. His show is December 8th, which happens to be the same day as Karen's baby shower and John Milton's birthday. I have not yet asked what sort of plan he has for afterward, but I assume he will continue working for the White Glove until he lines up an independently-wealthy divorceè.
I got my Linux machine to boot finally, using a boot floppy. I don't understand what is so difficult about getting this OS to work at such a basic level. It's not like it was just introduced a year ago, and this is the Redhat distribution, which you would think might have been tested somewhat. I will just have to start working on it, but since there is no ksh I will have to spend at least a small amount of effort to learn just enough bash to download and install ksh.
There is a freely-available ksh, called pdksh, but why would I bother to install that one when the actual Korn shell is also available for free from AT&T? Perhaps pdksh supports ANSI color, which is one of the nice things about bash, but I can live without that as long as I don't have to learn a new shell.
I am sitting in a training class today. I have a lot of new books and I think I will learn a few things, but I am most happy about having some more technical books to read. Yay!
Tomorrow is my fifth anniversary, and Karen's too I suppose. It's hard to believe that this much time has passed... it seems not too long ago that I first met her, dressed in a nice leather coat with great hair, and quite out of my league. On the other hand, we have seen and done many things in our time together, and the joy she brings me on a daily basis is just incredible. Soon Sam will be here, and I think my life-clock will get another adjustment, but I am looking forward to it with excitement.
Trepidation, too. But that's OK.
The latest version of Diablo II is out now, and I was going to play it but one of those free-trial firewalls seems to have locked down some of my network ports. I have already deinstalled it, so I am apparently going to have to learn yet more Windows skills. Not only do I not have the time for this sort of learning, I am using my brainpower to learn other things, such as C programming. I don't have a real and solid need to learn C, but since it forms the basis of the systems I work on, it certainly won't hurt to learn a bit of it. Especially if I get laid off, so Karen should be behind that.
Speaking of games, I found a used copy of Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, or whatever the subtitle is. I knew it was onty a matter of time after Jak II was released that the original game would start appearing from the EB backrooms. You girls know how much strategy it takes to buy the items you want at a bargain, so maybe you can appreciate my genius. I buy very few games at retail price.
Today I finally got my new corporate laptop, an IBM T40, and it is much nicer than that piece of junk I used to have. It has a new installation of Windows 2000 and has some extra bits I did not have before, like a CD burner and 512MB of RAM. It also is actually capable of running Photoshop 7 pretty well, and so in my free time today I created an image. I'm going to need something to do with the extra time this new machine will free up. I might continue to use Patty since he inspires me, but he is also very touchy so I will see if I get an angry email about this one.
I have five $1.00 coupons for any Odwalla beverage, if anyone wants them. I am concerned about my health, but not so much that I am willing to drink Odwalla of any flavor. I put them in my laptop bag, so hit me up for them if you want them.
I have managed to get to what I assume is the final part of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, due mostly to the fact that I had to stay home alone this past weekend. John Milton, the actual owner of the game, is irritated that I have not finished it, nor the copy of Jedi Outcast he loaned me. As you might suspect, his irritation stems from the large quantities of free time he has. His shiftlessness is starting to bother me, mainly because he seems to think that I still have some modicum of free time. He also expects me to visit him, but given that we used to live like Turkish prisoners you might understand my reluctance to go back, now that I am used to modern conveniences such as heat and sanitary facilities. Besides, I find it difficult to stay out of trouble when I move back into the old circles.
I am going to try to finish KOTOR before I start playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but who knows if I can hold out? One thing that really helped was that I managed to install the component-video cable so that I can play my Xbox games in high-definition. I really don't know how to explain just how much better it looks, but it is almost like going from stereo to Dolby 5.1. At the moment I am using regular RCA jacks for the sound, which sounds great now, but at some point I will see about using an optical cable.
The side-effect right now is that I am not quite sure how to get all of the various things playing at once. For example, the sound is not working when watching the dish. I know I should have figured this out once I got the Xbox working, but KOTOR in HD... you know. Naturally, none of the Philistines that live with me noticed anything, but I don't care about their lack of appreciation for life. I plan to instill my son with such virtues, so everyone else can sit around in squalor and wonder why their life sucks so much. Sam and I will know it's because they live in a HD-less void.
I decided, contrary to the comments I just made, that we should not get the HD channels on DirecTV. This is partly because we don't want to spend an extra $11 per month, partly because we don't watch enough movies to justify paying for HBO, Showtime and Cinemax already, and partly because we would have to get some DirecTV reseller to come out and add a new receiver onto our dish. Somehow we just got two instead of all three when we originally had it all installed, not sure why unless it was that plague of ignorance which seems to have gripped Paulding county. Good thing it's not contagious, but it must spread somehow.
Life can be difficult and confounding, sometimes at the same time. This morning I find a pair of suit-pants which are very tight. This is even more irritating that it otherwise would be considering that I don't drink much beer anymore. Where is the justice in life? This, of course, does not mean that my too-big belt has started fitting, either. I may as well start wearing used clown pants with a piece of twine as a belt.
Rather than go on about my love of the underscore character, maybe I should confess to some trangressions. I don't get into serious trouble anymore, or if I do, there is not much in the way of reprisal these days. I have come a long way in being responsible on my own and without threat of verbal or physical abuse, but there are times when my judgement takes a turn back to my roots as an irresponsible bum.
Karen likes to say that she would let me have anything I want. This is, of course, not how things really work, but she likes to say these things anyway. The good part here is that lately I have enough ingrained responsibility that I avoid buying things I should not, like loads of games, computer parts or beer. In fact I have been a hard-liner when it comes to saving money lately. This is in line with my Scottish heritage, but so is boozing it up, and this leads to problems. The bad thing is that booze leads to bad things at either extreme for some reason.
I have no other real explanation for my actions, but even though I was completely sober I feel the need to somehow blame beer in this situation. All I had to do was to go by Sam's Club and pick up some deer corn. Deer corn looks a lot like regular corn, but I am led to believe it is extra-tasty to deer. None of you seem to have any idea where Hiram is, but the EB Games is very close to Sam's, and I stopped in to see if Monster Rancher 4 was out yet. It wasn't, but I did find the elusive component video adapter for the Xbox. It was $19.95 and I consider myself victorious for leaving with just that item. No Jak and Daxter, just Jak II. There was plenty of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but no price sticker so I successfully avoided that. I avoided the other games using the "I'm still working on KOTOR and Dark Cloud 2" excuse, and I simply did not enter the PC games corner.
I then went to Sam's and was simultaneously dismayed and elated that I had to wak through the electronics section. Sure, most of it was crap that I would not touch with a ten-foot controller cord, but they had Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for $33. I had to buy it, especially after the Tactics Ogre deal where I somehow got a Chinese pirate manual instead of a real manual. I don't know why a Chinese pirate would bother to make a manual, but if they did, why would they just include ten out of thirty pages?
It's funny how I have lots of stuff to babble about until I acually open this file and start typing. Now I can't remember just what was so imperative that I share with everyone.
Today is International Credit Union Day. Celebrate by giving a bank the finger.
Back from vacation and there is a lot to cover. I had a very relaxing vacation at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, and I am ready to tackle things with new energy. Good thing, too, because there are a lot of things to tackle.
We have four new kittens, and since it seems that Mable has found better digs somewhere, we have five total. Kate, the surviving memeber of the last trio, is now top-cat, but completely scared of the tiny newcomers. The newcomers are also totally scared of humans, particularly B-Sting since he likes to chase them around the house. I had to drag one from under the woodpile after his most recent rampage. We moved them onto the screened porch so that they can cower and spray diarrhea in safety. They sure are cute, though.
We don't have names for the kittens yet. Karen wants to "let them name themselves", which more or less means that I can't name them. It's too bad, because I have some great ones already.
The baby armoire has been replaced with the right one, or at least replaced with the box with Karen's name on it. It's not nearly as small as you might assume a baby armoire would be. I'm going to have to figure out how to get that thing upstairs now, but maybe we should make the garage the nursery. I really don't think that would pass a vote, so I suppose I will have to come up with some ingenious system of ropes and pulleys.
Karen is doing pretty well for someone just entering the third trimester. Aside from occasional body aches and the inability to sleep, and of course the constant sinus infection, she is doing fine. Sam is doing fine as well, if his constant wiggling is any indication. I was talking to him while laying my ear on Karen's stomach and he decided to kick his Daddy in the head. I know it is silly, but I keep thinking this could mean he has amazing athletic potential. We will see; my usual approach to anything exciting is to remain calm right up to the final moments, but this time might be different.
While staying at the Grove Park Inn, we might have been pestered by the local ghost, known as the Pink Lady. She apparently fell to her death from the fifth floor and her activity is sort of localized around room 545. We stayed in room 542, the one that Daniel Day Lewis stayed in back in 1994.
All kinds of weird things did happen, but whether they were due to the Pink Lady or not is hard to tell. Right after checkin we ordered room service, and the tea had been made with salt instead of sugar. That was some joker in the kitchen, not the Pink Lady, but while we waited on a non-poisonous beverage all of the lamps went out. Not the TV, microwave or overhead lights, just the lamps and the alarm clock. We asked the guy about it when he brought the tea, and while I kind of thought that he would go get the maintenance man on it, he just blamed the ghost. Too bad I had already tipped him.
The lamps came on again later. I had already requested a wakeup call so that we would not miss our spa appointment. We spent the next day fairly unmolested and questioned how someone could fall over the large railing and kill themselves, and would someone really die from a fall of about twenty feet? We decided she was doing something she shouldn't, and that she was probably intoxicated, and must have landed on her head. Maybe she didn't like that, because the valet lost our parking stub and had to rummage through all of the keys. We escaped her feeble grasp anyway, and had a fun time at the Biltmore House.
Later that night we decided to sit in the Great Hall and snack a bit. This time the waitress accidentally dumped my pint of beer into my lap. At this point I am thinking it is funny, and we wonder if the Pink lady is after us. Our waitress guessed correctly that we were staying on the fifth floor and tells us that room 545 is the central location for ghost-type-things, but secretly I was still wondering just what part Daniel Day Lewis had in this.
All in all, the trip was wonderful and I ate a whole lot. I had to drive the Escalade, which was probably for the best since something less trendy would not fit in at the Grove Park Inn. Now that I am back I am juggling responsibility and leisure even better than before. Aside from kitten-duty, I gleefully prepared a dinner of vegetables-in-sauce with a side of grilled cheese, had a brief encounter with some laundry, put away some baby things, stowed hot-tub chemicals in a new bin, spotted two deer in the backyard, and played some Arx Fatalis until 0130 this morning. I feel much better, definitely.
Last night we went to pick up the baby furniture from "Babies R Idiots". Two of the three pieces were correct, but the armoire belonged to Sherry Lewis. Karen showed me the name on the box and I looked at her and said "Lambchop?" She then explained that it should say "Karen Armstrong". We have already told the store that they can just bring out the correct armoire when they come to pick up Sherry Lewis' furniture. I'm not taking that huge thing back. At least it wasn't my box that got to ride eleven miles in the rain.
We are leaving tomorrow for The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. Since I am just waiting around for my next big project to get started, which won't be until after October 17, I might skip out early. It's either that or work on my performance and development plan.
I did not play Star Wars on Saturday, instead I went back to Dark Cloud 2. I discovered that I could keep LOTS of fish in an aquarium, which I had already invented and made me feel like a idiot for filling my general inventory with fish. Even more irritating, once in the aquarium you can examine a fish's length and thus pick only the best for the weigh-in at the fishing contest. Of course now we are back in the middle of the week and I can't do much about the fish situation.
I was playing a lot of SW:KOTOR anyway. Still evil, and now I am starting to get some real money. I expect to play the game again and be a good person, but of course that will just make things harder. I have already been in a situation on Tatooine in which the good choice eludes me. Perhaps during the next run-through I will not piss-off everybody and will be able to find that vaporator. Until then, I'll be doing my impression of a grumpy Darth Vader.
Josh has moved into my house for the short period he will be in Hiram. I think he is already getting spoiled by my entertainment system: last night he discovered that the DirecTV box has Caller-ID and puts the phone number on the screen so you don't have to get up to see who it is. His exclamation was pretty similar to mine when I found that feature.
I have not talked about games much lately, but I have been playing a lot of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and The Simpsons: Hit & Run on the Xbox. Both are great, even though KOTOR does not support widescreen. I have been mentioning that on the Lucasarts forums lately, too.
I have put a lot of work into this polling mechanism, so I am taking a break for a bit. You should at least be able to see the results of your button-poking, but there is a bit of inaccuracy at the moment, plus there is no picture for now. There seems to be some sort of problem with whether or not the variables are numbers or not, but only when the number is zero. This probably has something to do with the fact that numbers beginning with zeros are considered octal. I have an idea of how to hack it into working properly, but I already spent time getting around the division-by-zero errors. I will have to change both this page and the program that generates the picture. Oh well. I think it is not too bad when you consider that this is my first real PHP program.
Karen is doing better, her cold is going away nicely thanks to my executive decision that she should take some Theraflu. The primary ingredients are not harmful, and everybody likes hot drinks on sore throats. Sam is still tapping out messages on her bladder, so he seems fine with it.
I apologize, but you are going to have to sit through my twiddling with the poll picture generator. Feel free to poke the button all you want, but don't count on the results being accurate.
A new fix version of Perl was released on Sep 25, and I am only mentioning it because of vanity. I am listed in the change list. It's a long list, so if you really want to see my entry you should CTRL-F and search for "armstrong". As usual, anyone who thinks this is cool gets extra points.
This morning I woke up with a big headache. It seems to be a sinus headache combined with a tension headache. Karen thinks I have it because we slept with the door to the porch open last night. All I know is that the three Advil I took when I got up wore off before I got to work.
I'm in a bad mood because of it, and I have already made it a point to aggrivate a coworker. I don't know who is next, but it since it is not even 10:30 yet I think I can get on a few more nerves before the day is over. I will wait until later, possibly Monday, to read his assuredly-scathing reply email. Nothing aggrivates confrontational people more than being ignored.
I don't think I'll be writing code for the web site today. I will do some paperwork I have been putting off, then slack off and have a nice lunch. The anime convention starts today, maybe they have some leftover tickets or are not overly concerned about crashers. I don't know, all I know is that I hurt from the shoulders up and I want some time to myself. I don't mean time playing games or time watching TV, just some relaxing time with friends and food.
I have a brand new poll program which was written entirely by myself. And it works! It currently lives on the PHP Test Page, so if you feel strongly about which letter you like more (A, B, C, or D), go poke the button. It says "poke" right on it. Go ahead.
Since I am just figuring this out, I didn't know of a great way to track whether you voted or not while still giving myself the ability to reset the voting at my leisure, and you know I am all about my leisure. My technique is to track you all by IP address, so if you can figure out how to change your IP address then you can go nuts on the voting. Call it a bias towards smart people. I am planning on setting up the option for people to create user accounts, and after that I should not need to track IP addresses.
If you are not sure if I can do this, verify your IP address is 38.107.179.212. Of course, if you are getting to this site through a corporate network, this IP probably belongs to your machine that connects you to the Internet. This will limit votes to one-per-company, so choose wisely. Try it from home and you will get a different IP address, and be able to cast another vote.
As requested, you should not have to click on Spike Spiegel's head more than once. As long as you let me write a cookie, you will be able to slide right in. You will be able to tell it is NOT working if you keep seeing either the disclaimer or the style-chooser form. Another thing that should work is the part which tells you the last time you visited. Since I just added this in today, no one will be able to tell if it is working until tomorrow, including me.
I went to visit my parents last weekend, and aside from getting a sinus infection it was rather nice. The new house is finished and looking great. My mom has a lot more taste than I had previously thought. Not much to say about the trip otherwise, except that I need to remember to bring a bottle-opener next time.
Another baby checkup has passed. Everything looks great, so maybe it is time to start planning the shower and registering for gifts. Registering is a great idea, and I appreciate the concept much more after reading some stuff in the various baby books we have. I knew that this was going to be complex, but I had no idea.
Another thing that I thought should be straightforward is breastfeeding. I'm thinking, how hard can it be? Reading the various books has enlightened us to just how many wrong ways there are to put a nipple in a mouth. I will spare you the details, but if you are really interested, get What to Expect When You Are Expecting/What to Expect The First Year. We have another one called From Here to Maternity, but since a lot of people like to use that name I don't know how to tell you which one to get. It has lots of drawings, if you are curious.
I do have a itch to say more, but my head is throbbing. I'll catch you up later.
Today is "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and I hope everyone is taking advantage of it. Yarrrr.
I would love to get enthusiastic about doing something neat on this web page, but I only have so much brainpower which can be devoted to technical pursuits. Lately I have been getting back into Perl, which means that I have had to stop spending as much energy on other languages like PHP, ksh or Japanese. Perl is at least easier than Japanese, and I have "someone" to whom I can speak Perl and find out if I am doing it wrong. I'm not abandoning Japanese, but I would be making much better progress if I had someone to work with.
I finally feel happy enough about a perl script that I wanted to post it. It will be of use to any UNIX admin, not just AIX people.
I'd like to thank all of my friends who have been emailing me porn. I won't embarass anyone, but thanks to you all. For the record, I'd like to get any future media at my home address. This will be extra-beneficial to you since I can easily email small movie clips back. Be sure to indicate your particular fetish when writing, otherwise you are opening up yourself to getting pretty much anything, due to the fact that most free porn is badly-described in the filename. Some of it can be quite misleading, actually, which can lead to embarassing situations when the wife checks your stash.
New section, maybe interesting... check it out.
It's a new day and a new caption picture, and a mild threat of violence. Huzzah!
If you have played Jedi Outcast, then you know basically what Jedi Academy is about. What you don't know about, however, is the dual-lightsaberness, dualbladed-saberness, the many races, the running-along-walls, the running-UP-walls, and many more acrobatics and saber techniques than I can remember right now. One of my favorites was in the second demo level, you get a pumped-up character and I picked Choke 3 which is the maximum. This allowed me to not only choke my enemies as per Darth Vader, I could also slam them into walls or use them as a shield. It will be hard to avoid this one.
I need to read the instructions for Devil Whiskey. I must be doing something wrong.
I may have told some of you that my computer had a virus, but it turns out I was wrong. I thought I had heard of a recent virus that causes your machine to shutdown immediately after startup, so that is where I got that assumption. I brought the machine up in Safe Mode and started looking around rather than my usual format/reinstall. I finally had the bright idea to check the event log, in which I found a note that the UPS service had shut down my rig. I suppose that I had accidentally activated it, so I disabled it and everyone was happy after that. I managed to start downloads of the Jedi Academy and Devil Whiskey demos before K made me go to bed.
I managed to play a few hours of KOTOR this week, but so far I have not even left Taris. Stupid Sith blockade. No matter, it is a lot of fun and hopefully I can avoid having my main character spend any more points on skills and feats before she becomes a Jedi. I expect she will not complete the dueling arena challenge, but hey.
I know I have an area for game talk, but since I don't play much of anything anymore it hardly seems necessary to have a separate section.
Mable returned last night. Not sure where she was for three days, but I know that Kate was happy to see her. Zuby, not so much.
In work/dork news, I am working at getting Perl to compile nicely on AIX 4.3.3, which you would think would be easy as just running the usual commands, but no. For some reason the perl devs take particular joy in making their product difficult to do anything with, even install. I found a couple of weird things and have avoided or fixed them, and now I am trying to compile it with the "aggressive optimization" option of the AIX cc. The fun part is how long it takes to run through the various processes, so while it is doing the next "make" I will try to get a new caption pic up.
Karen was trying to tell me that "het" is not a word. It is, of course, the past-tense form of "heat"; certainly it is not "heated", that is just silly. Like "meet" and "met". You would not say "meeted", because although "meted" sounds the same it has a different meaning. I tried to reinforce my stance by using "help" and its past-tense form "holp", which can actually be found in genuine literary titles we are all forced to read in high school, but she did not buy it. Instead she asks me how to pronounce T-O-M-B, which I do flawlessly, then she asks me how to pronounce B-O-M-B, which I purposely mispronounce because I am a jerk. That made me think that "boom" should be spelled B-O-M-B, but that is a fight for another day. Anyway, my complaints that her example is a justification of why I use words like "het" fell on deaf ears.
You might have noticed that "work" and "dork" are not pronounced the same even though the spelling indicates they should be. I say we don't have to live like this anymore. Webster managed to hack the ending K from "musick" and "magick", so why am I getting so much grief over trying to do the same sort of thing with temporal conjugations? I blame those fatcats in Washington.
The vacation was a success. I want to write about it in a separate section, but like a lot of things on this web site, that will probably be left undone. I have caught-up on my email from last week and will be starting actual work soon, perhaps after lunch.
Karen did well on the trip, for those of you that were worried about her. Sam did well too, judging from the amount of kicking that he has been doing. Kaley is also back from her week in southern California, so the house is almost back to normal. We are missing one dog and one cat but I think everyone will be back soon.
Just one more day to go before I leave for Disney World!
Actually, my boss will be on vacation Friday and Monday, so I just might stay at home and play with the Dungeon Siege Took Kit... or get a replacement title for my truck, in case Karen is reading this. What will probably happen is that both my conscience and Karen will push me into going to work, even though everyone I talk to around here says I should slack off for my own good. We shall see. Perhaps I will reach a compromise: I will stay home and pack.
I did write yesterday's update yesterday, but due to a nasty network outage I was not able to send it out to my web server. The continuity is unbroken, just a little behind schedule.
I would love to have something snappy and hilarious to say, but my head hurts too much. Karen thinks I'm getting sick, but really I just need some unbroken sleep. I had some Advil for breakfast and that seems to be helping, but what I really need is a couple of Extra Strength Midol and a couple of Aleve. That makes everything better.
Does it seems strange that a man wants to take Midol? Listen up guys, I'm here to expose the secret: Midol kicks ass. It does a few things you probably don't care about, such as reduce water retention, but the reason you want to take it is because it contains a painkiller and a muscle relaxer. That makes it pretty good on those tension headaches. Aleve does more-or-less the same thing, but since it is a different pill I assume it does not count towards an overdose.
Not that taking a double-dose of over-the-counter medicine is enough to harm you. The pharmaceutical companies set the recommended dosage very low because they know there are people out there who will take a double. If you are like me and you don't get wonderful results from a recommended dose, taking a double will not hurt you. I don't take a lot of medicine, though, and if you do then you might just be getting immune to it, so you are on your own there. My dad, for example, takes three or four ExLax capsules because one just doesn't work on him; he has just become immune to the effects through constant usage.
Thanks to Fox News, I am learning about several Commandments I had completely forgotten about. Like "Thou shalt not steal" and something about a graven image. I wondered immediately if the granite representation of the Ten Commandments constituted a graven image, but I suppose it means you should not be worshipping inanimate objects. Surely it does not mean you cannot make images of things you worship, otherwise pretty much any church would be in trouble. It might just mean you can't engrave the image into metal or stone, but then we are back to the granite block with the Commandments. This is why I don't go to church anymore, I ask bothersome questions that anger the clergy.
I am having a harder time coming up with some fancy new thing for this site than I thought I would, even though now I am somewhat capable of doing such fancy things. Not time-wise, but technical-skill-wise. I have considered rewriting the Opinion Pole so that it is both easier to use and more appealing, but somehow it just does not fascinate me right now. I know that no one will write, but send in some suggestions if you have any.
I am happy to announce that my son has all of his parts and appears to be perfectly normal. He wiggles a lot, too. As a reminder, the name is taken and anyone who steals our name can expect that I will make them cry through a combination of physical and mental abuse. I know you think I am kidding, but if you are jerky enough to take the name, you will find out a lot about me.
I have been probing the people around here to see if any of them are interested in doing some work for me. In general they seem uninterested in physical labor, and there has not been anyone so far willing to work for as little as I am willing to pay. This means I still have an opening for a low-paid handyman. You should be competent in carpentry, residential electrics, drywall, painting, landscaping, and be unafraid of wasps. Drop me a line if you are interested.
You might wonder what happened to John Milton, if you remember that I hired him to do this sort of thing. You can't get much cheaper than John, at $100 for about three days of work which included digging holes and filling them with gravel. The theory Karen has is that his parents got scared by the fact that he was able to find a living outside their influence and are doing all they can to keep him around. Then there is the part where they are angry that I make more money than either one of them, but jealousy is such a bad emotion to base anything on. Has anyone ever made any good decisions based on jealousy? Anyway, he is being detained in Auburn by his parents with some crazy scheme to open a second store across town or in Opelika. The weird part is that they seem to be trying to make it difficult for him to obtain the space and get started. Maybe they are afraid that he will move in with me and leave his son there for them to take care of, but that is unlikely considering how attached he is to Ethan. Either way, it's something of a irritation to me.
I managed to sort out some problems with burning the Redhat Linux ISO images onto CD, and some hardware issues with the machine I am using, and have now started the installation. Specifically, I had to add a CDROM drive and change to a different monitor. The black Acer monitor that Karen had at Auburn since about 1993 decided to break just as I was going to get some use out of it. After that I discovered I had somehow burned the wrong ISO to CD, then I accidentally overwrote the ISO file and had to download it again. Despite all of that, looks like I will have a Linux machine soon.
I did already have one, actually, but I have forgotten the password. No reason to avoid installing something new if I can't get into the system.
I am really tired today. Lots of crazy crap at work, and I did some cleaning this weekend so that Karen's sinuses won't be so clogged. She seems to be doing fine at our house now, and I plan on keeping it that way.
I did not go to the Coca-Cola Night at Six Flags on Friday. I was on-call and Karen did not feel up to it, so I gave my tickets to Kaley. She said that it was not as crowded as last year, plus the rides were working. I'm glad she had a good time because she has been having a rough time otherwise, and she is too nice of a person to deserve such bad times. Someone like me who had not always been particularly nice would do well to spread their undeserved good times around to friends, so that is what I did.
I am very, very glad that Karen and I took advantage of the vacation package at Walt Disney World, because I really could use a week away from this place. Besides all of the work, everyone is on edge about the offshoring of the IT department. In the end, we might save enough money to make up the bonus of the Chief Information Officer who is behind this massacre. I imagine that no one would be stupid enough to outsource the work that I do, but I fully expect the executives and directors responsible for this to leave the company before three years have passed. I think if I got a bonus of a few million dollars, it would be a lot like if I were elected President. If I were elected President, I would really have no place to go but down after that, and I think if Bill Clinton could have such a viable career after all the stupidity, lies and semen he spread around the White House, I should be able to do much worse. I would, of course, have to run as a Democrat, otherwise the media would eat me alive.
There is probably more computer-talk thank normal, but I'll have some other news tomorrow, so just hold tight.
Karen wanted me to put an extra hard disk in her computer at work, and in accordance with what usually happens when I work on a PC, I broke her existing setup. I spent some time last week working on it, up until the point where I broke it. I first learned that you should unplug your old disk because XP will find and destroy any old version of Windows you might have, then I learned that when Karen asked for more disk space, she meant A LOT more, so the dinky 4.2GB disk I had just would not do. We went to Best Buy and picked up a 160GB Maxtor, and if she fills that up I am going to send her to counseling.
Speaking of counseling, the work on Karen's computer got my geek going, so despite my fatigue I set up Eudora on my box at home and gave Outlook Express the finger. I suppose that many of you don't know why Outlook or Outlook Express sucks, but trust me, it's like growing up without candy: you don't know how much your life stinks until you get some of the good stuff. I also found a free program to burn CDs and started on that.
You might wonder why I would need a program to burn CDs when WinXP has built-in support for such things. It is because WinXP only supports the type of burning that does not allow you to duplicate anything more useful than an audio CD. Sure, you can copy a load of files over but it does not allow you to burn an ISO image to CD, which is needed when you are trying to make a bootable RedHat 9 Linux CDROM. Once I get Linux loaded on a box then I will be able to use a real email client: pine.
While I was stuck at home working on things at odd hours, I managed to spend some time playing Dungeon Siege. Due to my limited time, I felt like I would not be a horrible cheater by using an experience-boosting plugin, so my characters were able to gain power at ten times the normal speed. I have started getting the urge to create my own DS modules, but I have to remind myself that I don't have time to play the games, much less design parts of them. Still, it seems like it would be easier to come up with an idea than with Morrowind, since Dungeon Siege is mostly about combat and Morrowind is mostly about storyline.
I am back, and I do not know much more Japanese than I did before. Karen says that I don't need to sign up for a class or hire a tutor, but maybe I will anyway. She is having a tough time due to the learning method she has chosen, and I would really like to help her. In order to do that, I need to understand Japanese myself and then teach it to her. I do have a couple of hours each night where I don't do anything to further my family, education or career, so maybe one day I will get off my ass and do something important with that time.
I have been busy, but you knew that. I worked last weekend and am now on call as of Monday morning. This basically means that I am not able to catch up on my sleep from this weekend, nor am I likely able to slack off this week. Although I should be doing something important right this minute and I am instead typing this update. I am also considering sneaking out to get something to eat and watch some Matlock on the bar TV.
I do have some things to talk about but I think you will find them very dull. Such as the fact that Karen is trying to stay in our house again. She did fine the first night, but the second day she petted one of the cats and developed a headache within fifteen minutes. If she manages to stay at the house, I might be able to get the mattress pad back.
I promise I will change that dang caption picture when I get two minutes to rub together. Is it my fault that no one can think of a good caption?
I need to learn Japanese right away. Be back soon.
We have another review from Patrick, our Brooklyn correspondent. This time, Patrick departs from his usual public-radio-style fare and delivers something for the low-brows in my readership.
This weekend I was handed an authentic, German-made beer stein. No, not one of those garish looking monstrosities with the putti designs and that crazy lid-cap-thingy that you can't get away from in the German airports. I am talking about a REAL stein. The half liter "vessel" is a ceramic piece with a handel big enough for the biggest ham-fist out there, which for me is like driving on a curvy road in a car that only has a bench seat. My awkwardness aside, drinking pleasure has increased significantly. Constructed simply-a large, thick base tapers slightly then remains constant through the wall, tapering again, slightly at the rim-the austere nature of my new stein allows me to focus on my drinking. It is a matter of focus people. And the beach-sand, brownish-gray of the glaze doesn't ask anything of me. With an extra couple of brain cells freed up, my beer becomes smoother and sweeter; just the way I like it. So far, I have only drank Coors and Budweiser but will be debating Ballantine, the various Millers, Michelob, Corona, and yes, Colt 45. I do not know about the expensive "froo-froo" beers yet-I will need more money or a generous handout. However, if it improves those to the same degree as the more common names, then heaven couldn't be that far around corner. I am coming to join you Elizabeth! With no cap, no designs, no putti. Just me, wrestling with the foam- old-world style. Patrick 8/4/2003
A cold one sounds fine right now, and maybe even some oom-pah music. Not lederhosen, though.
Many of the pages around here will be suffering while I rewrite them somewhat. I was totally confused by the haphazard layout of my stylesheets, particularly with my choice of descriptive terms. For example, I was using a paragraph tag to define the little date-stamp I put at the top of each day's commentary. This was not just bad form but very bothersome because I had to be careful what rules I applied to the base paragraph tag. I replaced it with a more-correct DIV tag, and when I rewrote the stylesheet rules to look for the new tag it basically broke all of the other pages which use the P tag for that purpose. It will be better in the long run.
If you see other weird things around here, please give me a little time to work on the new structure. I am also converting the various HTML pages around here to PHP equivalents. The dealie that saves your style preference is a PHP program, so until I get everything converted you might have some uneven results. Then there is the Bitch Barn and its offspring, the Caption Contest. Those programs are written in Perl, and I think the easiest route will be to get the existing Perl code to read the cookie, rather than rewriting the whole thing in PHP. I will be doing that last.
Another new thing is that I am now editing these files on an AIX machine instead of my Win2k laptop. Since I have to ftp the PHP code to my web server in order to test it, there is no reason for me to hamstring myself further by working on a Windows machine.
I revalidated this site to conform to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and validated the CSS again while I was at it. I don't have enough information on compliant structure to conform to XHTML 1.0 Strict, and reading the DTD is pretty dry, so I will just play with PHP for a while and worry about conforming later.
Non-computer stuff first, as promised.
I won my auction for Tactics Ogre, and the manual is pretty pitiful. I don't know if there are versions with bigger manuals, but the ten-page one I receieved made reference to page number 26 and more, so I think that there must be one somewhere. I'm sure I will figure it out, I'm a smart type.
I am using a new hex editor: XVI32. Free, good and small.
You might notice that I have gotten the style changing mechanism figured out. You might also notice that I am now writing a cookie to your machine, and if you do not allow cookies you will be stuck with the usual black style. Once you set your style the form disappears, so if you want to change it back, go to the PHP Test Page, which always shows the form.
There was more than one problem with my implementation of this mechanism, but now I have fixed the root issue with cookies as well as obtained a new tool and made the conversion to PHP.
I suppose that "conversion" is probably too strong a word to use. I'm just glad it works, and I am well on my way to moving into the 21st century with my web site thanks to PHP and its ease of use.
I will spend some more time on the style sheets. I know that not everyone likes the grey-on-black, however I do find it easier to read. Suggestions are welcome, as usual.
I decided that I don't really have the mental energy to teach myself JavaScript at this point, so I am reading the Programming PHP book from O'Reilly. I will be trying out some of this stuff on the PHP Test Page.
Lots of stuff got done this weekend. John Milton earned his money. I was not able to check whether or not our idea for improving drainage worked well or worked really well. We know it will work, it's just a question of water capacity and draining speed.
Lots of events for me to report, so let's see if I can remember them all.
Most of you are probably old enough to remember a time when you could be driving (or riding) down the highway, minding your own business, when suddenly you would be accosted by a thin ribbon of magnetic tape that had become unwound from a cassette that someone had let fall onto the road. I'm sure you had thought that these dark days were over, firstly because the cassette section of a music store is more like a leper colony where only the customers who are not accepted into society go to shop, and secondly because this is 2003. We're talking the 21st century, and yet not only do I NOT have a flying car or a solar-powered home, I have been attacked by a monster from 1983 just this week. I don't know what sort of person would be listening to cassettes these days, aside from me, but I suppose that would be the same sort of jerk which would toss one out the window. I have listened to some crappy cassettes in my time, but I never felt the need to throw one onto the highway.
I don't know who it is around the office that keeps putting paper that has been through a three-hole punch into the printer, but if I find out who it is I will have to have a word with them. I can't be printing out things on that sort of paper all the time, particularly when the holes are on the right side of the sheet. I'm sure it's one of those damn offshore trainees, but I have not caught one yet. Good thing they are not actual employees, or even citizens, so no one would miss one if they happened to fall into the Hooch in the bad part of town.
I like my truck, and I like it a lot, but I still need to get used to it. Karen likes for me to drive it because it gives the illusion of safety. What this actually means is that in your average collision, I will end up either on top of or to the side of the person I hit. The flip side of that is, of course, that my truck weighs very close to 5000 pounds and the stoppage, or lack of, needs some adjusting to. Just today I was driving to work behind a Town & Country van, and it was raining. I was coming down the hill on Bankhead towards the light at West Lake Avenue, near Grove Park, and the light switches to yellow. The van either decides to make a run for it or does not see it, but then hits the brakes at the last minute. We were both going about 45, and the van manages to stop just inches after clearing the white line. You know, the line you are supposed to stop before, not after. When I see him stopping, I do an imitation of Yosemite Sam trying to get the dragon to stop in "Knighty-Knight Bugs". Thankfully, I have been in several accidents and I have a cool head in these situations, so I was able to perform a maneuver that Karen saw me do once, which is jam on the brakes and ever-so-carefully turn the wheel. In this case I did stop about ten inches before I would have hit the van, but if I had not then I would have stopped alongside it, possibly dragging my mirror along the side of the van. I gave a nice honk after I had come to a stop.
You might think that I would segue into a discussion about getting a car, particularly one that is highly-rated in both safety and maneuverability, but the fact is that I don't like getting into arguments, I don't like people telling me what to do, I don't like being made to feel guilty, and I especially don't like getting into conflicts that I cannot win... so there is no segue. Once the symptoms of a mid-life crisis set in, you might hear some more from me. Until then... move along people, nothing to see here.
Instead of a car, which I freely admit is a silly thing to want, we are thinking about getting a pool. Personally, a pool seems more trouble that it is worth, but that is probably because I don't swim. Karen says that it is great for kids, so now we just have to figure out what we want. Essentially our options are either concrete or liner. I am leaning towards concrete since liners can be punctured and I don't think you can get a zero-entry pool in liner form. Karen will be doing more research as she is able. One thought is to enclose it inside a glass structure, but I'm not John D. Rockefeller. I am just going to wait around and see how this turns out.
John Milton will be arriving tomorrow so I need to print out the short list of things for him to do while working for me. I am going to try to get out of driving into the office tomorrow and Friday because I am sick, but if I can be around to supervise John then all the better. Worst-case, I will be working on Coca-Cola stuff; best-case, I will be playing Knights of the Old Republic.
Not that I have time, but I found No One Lives Forever and Warlords Battlecry at the Hiram EB Games. Both have sequels, both are highly rated, and both cost $7.95, but neither has a manual. No One Lives Forever is probably the only good game to use the Lithtech engine, and is a FPS/adventure deal in the vein of Austin Powers. Warlords is considered by some to be better than the later-released Warcraft III, or maybe that's the sequel I'm thinking of. Either way, if I ever find myself confined to the house, please don't think that I am going to be bored, as long as I have use of my hands and eyes. Ears would be good, too.
Karen went to a real doctor and got some real medicine yesterday, so hopefully she will be able to knock down that infection soon. She also got an obscene amount of anti-heartburn samples, so perhaps she will get better there as well. Just four more weeks until the ultrasound.
I signed up for Safari from O'Reilly. What this does is let me read five books for $9.95 for one month. Actually there are five "slots" but most books use only one. The Pocket Reference series seems to use half a slot, and some books use two or three. Considering the different technical areas I am interested in reading about, this works out pretty well. I get full, searchable copies of books for 30 days. They also have books published by Que, Addison-Wesley and Sam's.
Whenever I delete my work on this page and have to start over, it really causes me to lose track of what I was talking about.
My parents were up Friday afternoon, leaving Saturday before John Milton and Bronwyn arrived. Those two left Sunday afternoon, and aside from being sick and having little goof-off time due to playing host, this weekend seemed to go by well enough. It was a long one, though, due to the work, but a good point is that John Milton left Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for me to play. Apparently he wants me to lose my job, which is not a good thing considering that I have just hired him to be my man-servant.
John Milton specified that he did not want to do any cleaning, however I actually did hire him to work for me. He will be doing various things around the house such as patching mortar, banishing wasps, cutting grass, and a list of other things which I have not yet written down. He will be moving in on Thursday.
I think I have worked up the nerve to try selling something on Ebay. The first victim will be my Bluetooth wireless LAN equipment, followed by my IDSL modem. I'm sure that I have some other stuff I can get rid of, such as an extra SNES. Of course, if any of you want some of my junk you are more than welcome.
The sad part of the Ebay thing is that I really just got inspired because I have been spending some time bidding on various things, such as Tactics Ogre and an E-Reader. I can't seem to find my copy of Ultima 7 so I will probably end up buying it on Ebay again. Luckily, I found both Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II, so I was able to get jiggy with the fan missions yesterday. Not only did I finish both of those games, I played them again, so you know they have much flavor.
I am thinking of changing my rule so that I can actually obtain some of these items I am looking for. That rule is: never bid more than $15 for anything on Ebay. I might move that up to $20.
Let's go over the intended purpose of the turn signal. The original reason for this device is to notify others on the road that you are about to change lanes or make a turn. Perhaps, if you think about it for a few seconds, you will realize the stupidity of hitting your signal after I already see you darting in front of me. Is the flashing yellow supposed to soothe me? Should I feel better that you at least had the consideration to think perhaps a cop was watching and decided to give a token flash? If I can already see you jamming on your brakes, I have passed the point of caring about the signal since I already know you have to turn in to the Dairy Queen RIGHT NOW.
I admit I don't always use my blinker. However, this is intentional. Under normal circumstances, I signal well in advance of a maneuver so that those behind me have enough time to process the information and act accordingly. It is also courteous. There are times, however, when I know that the person I am behind is purposely being an ass and I don't want them to know which way I am turning. This is true for changing lanes even more, since there are many more people who enjoy blocking off both lanes of traffic. I sure as hell don't want to alert them to the fact that I am about to jump in front of their car because they will simply speed up and block me. It is helpful that these people don't realize that a good driver can fit his vehicle into spaces that normal people would be afraid to try, else they would be smart and keep the gap length shorter than my truck's length. Another time that I don't use a signal is when I have my hands full controlling the truck. This is easier with the automatic, so that is not much of a problem these days.
One of my fondest memories is of my night drinking at the Babbity Bowster in Glasgow. I don't know why I think of that so much, and John Ferrier whom I met that night. To me, John was the archetypical Scotsman. Friendly and social, he drank white wine while I drank whatever looked different. We talked about all kinds of stuff, from movie stars to my truck. He seemed to think I drove an 18-wheeler, since they don't have pickup trucks in Scotland. I mentioned to him that I had not gotten adjusted to the weather in Scotland and I wondered if he felt cold. He did, and said that he spent most of the winter at his house in Spain. Talk about wacky. That is odd to an American, but perhaps not so much to a European. He also had a crush on one of the barternders, a thin blonde girl, even though he was around 60 years himself. Unfortunately, I was only staying at the Babbity Bowster one night and had to leave for Oban the next day, else I might have had more than one memorable night in one of the older bars in Glasgow.
I cropped that enormous picture of the Pirate Keyboard. Now it should take you slightly less time to get to the real reason you visit: my enlightening dissertations.
I received a call today that my latest grill rack has arrived, so I should be able to get that tomorrow afternoon. My parents are arriving tomorrow afternoon as well, and they are bringing more cats. John Milton was planning on visiting this weekend as well, arriving on Saturday with Bronwyn and some meat. He was sort of happy about the completion of the grill, but he does not like people's parents and may not come up. That is too bad because I have his two new DVDs riding around in my truck. I hope he shows up because I want to pick up two re-upholstered chairs on Friday as well.
John Milton is looking for a job since he managed to be fired by his mom this week. He has no skills but I am considering hiring him to be a butler or man-servant of some type. I figure that if I supply him with free lodgings that I can get away with paying him a $5000 per year salary.
Time for a dork minute. I learned something neat yesterday concerning awk programs and spacing. Check out this command I used in a Korn shell script I am writing:
lsvg -l ${badvg} | awk '$2 ! ~ /jfslog/ && $2 ~ /jfs/ && $6 ~ /open/ { print $1,$NF }'Nice and readable. I figured out that I can leave out most of those spaces that make this easy for humans to read:
lsvg -l ${badvg}|awk '$2!~/jfslog/&&$2~/jfs/&&$6~/open/{print$1,$NF}'Much better, eh? That will probably require an extra two minutes of staring to make out the logic.
I did not get much sleep last night, slipping away sometime around 4:30 this morning. I feel pretty good despite that, not sure why. This afternoon I am told that the emergency I was working on is no longer an emergency. I still have to get the work done, however I was asked to not kill myself getting it done. Yay. Too bad I already got into trouble over this with Karen.
I don't understand why if I want a bonus track on a music CD, I have to order it from the UK or Japan. As you might know, my new truck has a CD player so I spent some cash on music I had never felt the need to own, since I only listen to music while I drive. I ordered hours... from Japan so I could get an eleventh track. Some people did not like this disc, but I think they are just stuck in the Seventies. Definitely worth the extra cash to get that song, but I am still mystified at how people here get shafted.
The keyboard jokes continue in the front page picture. As a bonus, it is also a pirate joke.
Looks like the fat kids are a real hit. Karen tells me they are four-year-old wrestlers. There seems to be some confusion as to their ethnic background, but personally I think they are latino. It all adds up: wrestling, McDonald's, that cap... probably from Texas.
I'm sure you all know that I have an uncontrollable addiction to electronic games, and you also probably know that I expect to have a new child before February 2004. I am not the only one, it seems, and there is a small-but-growing group of like-minded people that can be found at GamerDad. They give reviews of stuff, have a family-friendly standard, and in general help people realize that it's OK to keep playing games once you reach parenthood. I already knew that, of course, but you know I cannot pass up an oppotunity to spread my non-conformist ideas around.
Speaking of non-conformist ideas, The Italian Stallion is back from his trip and I am trying to get some details from him. So far all I know is a list of books he has read or is reading: Manufacturing Content, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, Downsize This, Stupid White Men, and Towards a New Cold War. Just think, I might be reading this sort of intellectual stuff if not for The One Hobby. As things are now, I am trying to get him to write something for the site, but since he just completed an object he might be more into painting than writing in the near future.
I heard today that a research report comissioned by the Democratic Party indicated a direct correlation between how well-behaved children are and how much time they spend with their mothers. That does not seem terribly surprising to me, but what I don't understand is why the Democrats are witholding the results from the press. It's almost as if they want mothers to work, but why would mothers need to work unless they were single? I don't know, perhaps it's so that they can keep the tax rates high. What else could it be?
Let's see, what's new? John Milton is visiting for the weekend. Since he has to work at Scott Antique Market from Thursday through Sunday, he is staying with me. It takes him about an hour to get to my house from there, but it's better than driving 90 minutes back to his house in Auburn. Or is it?
The fact that John Milton is visiting is a definite setback on the desmellification project. Not only is he stinking up the place, poor Mabel is trapped in the house while recovering from her surgery. For those of you who do not yet know, she has had a rear leg amputated. We are giving her tuna during her convalescense, so that's three new strong smells.
There have been a few wacky hijinks at work today, but I might be able to grab some lunch soon. I hope so because it is looking like another long Friday for me. I do have a hard time taking the 0830-1730 work hours seriously if I can't leave at noon on Friday like everyone else.
It has taken me quite a while to get a replacement for the grill rack that was tossed into the construction dumpster. Turns out that my grill had two half-length racks, so today I ordered another one. I expect it will arrive in time for the traditional Halloween Cookout. It's not a tradition yet, but just wait.
Karen let me have some beer today, as long as I agreed to not stink like a brewery. So I will be keeping myself as odor-free as possible so that I don't make her sick. I do not want her to be sick, not at all, but I do want to take a stance against whatever the heck has been stressing me lately.
Really, what has been stressing me lately is Karen's discomfort. I don't know how many of you are aware of the deep love I have for Karen, but the mere idea that she is sick makes me very upset. Even more upsetting is the fact that I don't know what to do to make her feel better. On top of that, as if more was neccessary, she is upset because I am upset. Talk about a vicious cycle. I am not able to do anything about her discomfort aside from just being around, so I have to do what I can to make myself comfortable. This is a rather difficult thing, considering that the things which give me comofort tend to cause her discomfort. I really wish that I could be completely happy just playing games, because that would go a long way toward helping her to not worry about me. She has already notified me that she does not want me to take on a girlfriend, so I suppose I am left with the old standbys of games and beer.
The good news is that she just entered the second trimester, which is the best part of being pregnant. I think the sickness will subside in time for our two vacations. It will also be nice if she can start living in our house again, although that is a selfish wish. She is pretty comfortable staying at her parents' house, and I fully support that as long as she is happier there. I would like to be happy there as well, but I just enjoy being at my own house. I spent enough time at their house while mine was being built, and while it is not a bad place, I just would rather be at my own place.
Part of that can be seen in something odd which happened last week. I was away from work for July 1 through July 6, and I spent some of my time putting together various pieces of furniture which were birthday gifts for Karen. Once, Karen was there for the afternoon and I was working on a wagon that her father had gotten her to pull behind the lawnmower so she could do more in the way of landscaping around the house. I had been using a mallet to bend the metal back into shape, then I used some WD-40 to coat the rusty parts and stop an axel squeak. I was coming back into the air-conditioned house afterward, and something about the circumstances just felt sort of fatherly. I was thinking about telling Karen about that but the moment did not present itself, and of course I forgot about it. I don't know if she would appreciate the profundity of it anyway. It definitely made an impression on me, but the source of the feelings are still something of a mystery. I think it had something to do with the smell of WD-40 and the move from the summer heat into the cool house, but whatever the cause, I think I will be an OK dad.
I ask you, where does the time go?
I had a nice six days off from work and I managed to accomplish a few things. I didn't get a lot of sleep, but for me that is not a huge deal. I'm already back in the swing here at work, and if I can ever get a couple of beers in me, I'll be feeling like my old self again.
I don't know who my favorite reader is any more. It seems like my web site was a short-lived fad amongst my friends, sort of like a pet rock or a cold sore. That's OK, we don't need them, do we? Now we can talk smack about whomever we like, isn't that right, my precioussss?
I put some new headlights in my truck. It seems that there is some sort of design flaw in the 2003 RAM headlights which prevent the highbeams from looking much different from the lowbeams, but at least they are brighter now. Next step is to put a Flowmaster on it. A friend put a pair on his 2003 Ram 2500 and they both increase power and mileage. They add this nice muscular sound to the truck as well, which means that I am going to have to sneak this mod in when Karen isn't looking.
Last night, Karen and I watched Attack of the Clones followed by The Thing with Two Heads. The second movie was better.
I know that the quality of the pictures on the front page has been slipping. It is just difficult to find decent stupid pictures lately. I welcome submissions.
I removed the JavaScript code from this page, mostly, and I will be using a JavaScript test page to work out my problems. I realized that I was actually getting part of it right, thanks to Mr. T. If you really want to know how he helped, just ask, otherwise I will assume you don't care. I'm not sure that I care; I have been surfing the web all day.
I took Karen to see the midwife today. He is not quite as concerned about the various problems as we are, but offered some good advice as well as writing a prescription for more antibiotics to combat the sinus infection. I know he wanted to help out with the other problems, particularly the gas, but there isn't really anything you can do about it.
By the way... we heard the heartbeat.
First things first: what would this web site be like if Mr. T wrote it?
A fact that is probably not realized by the readership is that I don't actually write these posts in the order that you read them. This part, for example, was written last. Anyway, I'm tired of computers for today. You will see why if you read all of today's complaining. I'm ready to use the machines for the purpose that I started using them for so many years ago: playing a game. Perhaps I am on edge because I am on a beer hiatus, or perhaps because my sinuses feel like the People's Front of Mucus is storming the front. Then there is the sudden crop of weekend work, although that was not entirely unexpected.
I want to publicize this because there seems to be some bad information out there: I don't know anything about Macintoshes, or any Apple product for that matter. They are often called computers, but I have not been magically granted innate knowledge of their inner workings... or outer workings, even. Perhaps this comes from the same place that the overestimation of my PC knowledge comes from.
Working on a PC is just a hobby of mine. I have never been trained on it and I have not read through many books. I have completely read though more classic novels than books about DOS or Windows. I recently bought some books on Windows XP since that is what I run on my rig at home, but I can't say that I have read through them completely. Somehow I seem to be held in high regard, though.
When I am asked what I do for a living, I don't like telling people that I work on computers. Best-case, they ask me what computer they should buy to replace the piece of junk they currently own. Worst-case, the next time we meet, the laptop comes out and they need some help because they deleted some critical system file and they can't play Solitaire. I was in a similar position a few years back, except for the "can't play Solitaire" part, and since my acquaintances largely define the phrase "computer illiterate", I had to figure this stuff out on my own. It was trial-and-error, money was lost and things were damaged, but that's how I know what I know. If you can read and use simple tools not unlike a pointy stick, you too can learn what I know.
Maybe you are wondering, if Gary works on computers, then why does he know so little about them? I know that I have never really bothered to explain the fundamental differences between the machines I work on and the machines you buy from Gateway to give to your grandmother so she can order the new Hillary Clinton book from Amazon. First thing is the hardware difference. I work on the IBM RS/6000, which has little resemblence to a PC other than the features it inherited from its ancestor, the IBM AT. It is much easier to work on because it actually tells you what is wrong with it when something breaks.
The operating system is also much different. AIX is a hybrid of BSD and System V UNIXes, with plenty of IBMisms thrown in, such as the System Management Interface Tool, or smit, and the Logical Volume Manager, or LVM, which is on par with the Veritas application except that it comes as part of the operating system. It doesn't look anything like Windows. It is much more similar to Linux than anything else commonly found in people's houses. Due to these key differences, the amount of time I spend reading technical books and working on the computers here does not translate at all into more knowledge about home computers. Sorry to disappoint, but there you are.
Someone today asked me to explain the permission system used in UNIX. I will put one here as well.
The basic parts of permissions on a file are for the owner, the group and for everyone else. These permissions are read, write and execute. A file can have read and write permissions for the owner, and read for people in the file's group, and no permissions for anyone else. You could have group write permissions and no owner write, and if the owner did not belong to the file's group, he would not be able to write to the file.
The question was specifically about which number was "read".
This is because of one
of the ways to specify a set of permissions. If I wanted to give a file read-write for owner and read-only for
everyone else, I would use this command: chmod 644 filename. You should think of the permissions as a
set of binary numbers and you will get this. The first set of permissions is for the owner and they show up as
"rwx" when you list the files in a directory. These represent binary bits where
0 is off and 1 is on. In the above example you would have
110-100-100,
or rw-r--r-- if you looked at the file listing. If you
express the binary 110 in decimal, you have 4+2+0=6. The group permission would be 100=4+0+0=4. I don't know if any
of that will stick, but if you use a UNIX, perhaps I have helped you out a little.
I'll warn you right off the bat: today is going to be a nerdy day. I'll be nice to my most loyal reader and put the non-dork stuff first. You're welcome.
Whilst lunching yesterday, I noticed that Hamas derailed the peace process yet again. I am only surprised by the fact that everyone else seems surprised. I wonder how surprised Arafat and Sharon will be when US Marines start landing in Israel. I don't think that would happen, really, but it is something to think about. Sharon is in a good position but he really should start trying to play ball with the US rather than his usual, and oddly Arafat-like, act of talking peace while sending out tanks. Neither side wants peace, apparently, even though the people on the news say that the agitators are a minority on both sides. I feel my concern slipping away.
The latest word from sThig is that there is probably going to be a Transformers movie, but not just any Transformers movie. A live-action Transformers movie. I tend to think that it will be "live action" in a way similar to Spider-man. I don't mean how the web site commands you to "Enter Spider-Man" when you hover over his picture, I mean how it was a mix of live people and computer animation. I will catch it on HBO.
I think I have come up with a solution to the problems I encounter when trying to be entertaining on this site. That solution: a fictional character.
Think about this scenario. Some guy goes to a Don Rickles show after living under a rock his whole life, and manages to get offended. Let's say Don cracks a few jokes on those "underrockers". Now this guy will go back home thinking "That Don Rickles, I sure don't like him." Now say next week, this novice goes to see Triumph. The guy thinks it is hilarious, sells his rock and moves to the city. Yes, yes, not at all realistic but just hang on for a minute. Anyway, I could be terribly wrong but I just don't think that you are going to get as offended by the jokes that come out of a crappy-looking rubber dog as you might a real person. So... I need to come up with my own rubber dog.
Not literally a rubber dog, just some sort of mascot. That way, when people complain about what I say, I can stay out of trouble with Karen. I have tried to get people to complain to me directly or to put comments on the site here, but it just isn't working. Now what I get are complaints, AND I get in trouble. I am thinking some sort of puppet can act as a scapegoat here, diverting wrath and blame away from me. Plus, if my eventual child should somehow stumble upon this web site, and in turn figure out this is his or her Daddy acting like a nutbar, I can always blame the puppet. That should work great until the late pre-teen years, but I figure I'll be reviled by then anyway, so what the hell?
I only thought of this yesterday afternoon, so I don't have much in the way of candidates. I did consider drawing a cartoon, but I can't draw and it would take too much time and effort to justify the end result. I do know that I don't want a real object, just some idea I can lie about and promote as a real object. Or, even better, I could just assign one of my friends to the position. I do have a great friend that does not have internet access... hmmm.
Geek time. I updated a couple of my Korn shell scripts. I know that none of you have even even seen AIX, and only one of you has used the Korn shell, but like everything else on this site, I'm posting it anyway. I promise if I ever write anything using WSH, I will post it as well.
I'm sure most of you have gotten some sort of spam email. I certainly do, thanks to the harvesters that crawl the web looking for anything that matches the pattern of an email address. There are several ways I could protect myself from being harvested, however since I love you all so much, I use the traditional and detectable email link. This lets most of you send me emails with a mere click. Nevermind that I don't check my mail a lot... that is going to change.
I was finally getting around to setting filter rules in Outlook Express, hoping to do something about the spam that manages to leak through Speed Factory's young Bayesian spam filter. I had gotten the inspiration to do so from Black Viper, who you might be familiar with if you have ever Googled for pointers on which XP services you could turn off. I had worked on these rules for a while before I got the idea to look and see if there was some sort of Bayesian filter available for use on a PC. Turns out that there is at least one, and it is a good one: POPFile. Works with OE and other, better email programs to sort your mail. I have only received three emails since installing it, so right now it is rather ignorant of where to put things. Once I have it trained, I will report back on how well it works.
The more dilligent readers will notice that the Opinion Pole lost the update symbol (¤) for perhaps ten minutes. After I edited this main page, I issued another poll question, so go make your anonymous and inconsequential opinion heard.
Work is slowing down. I don't have anything on my whiteboard until July, once I finish off the thing I am working on today and tomorrow. This is good news, even though I am sure I will be able to find plenty to do. There is enough to do at home, that's for sure, so I won't be visiting any of you. Sorry about that.
I might be obtaining a CD burner. I have agreed to a deal in which I download RedHat 9 for someone who is stuck with 28.8k dialup and he gives me his leftover burner. That will definitely help out the upgrade schedule. The sad part is that I don't use my machine very much any more. I really need to get a cushy couch into my office so Karen will come up there, and a nice large monitor so she can see what I am doing.
My big update today is basically just to say things are fine, aside from Karen being sick. I will continue to stick to my policy on that subject, however, and move along to saying that I got in some decent time playing Dark Cloud 2 this past weekend. It's a good thing that I didn't go to the jello wrestling thing with John Milton, because Karen was too sick to go to the place she wanted to: the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
The jello wrestling has passed, so on to new things. I drove my new truck to work today, and it is very nice. I tell people it is very nice, but when I mention that I don't know how to work the CD player, somehow I am being ungrateful again. Either I don't know how to work it or it only takes one CD instead of the advertised six, but I don't think I should get in trouble for bringing that up. The CD player was proposed to me as a selling-point, and let's not forget that I was more than willing to buy it with the original, ripped seats and the dent in the side of the bed. I'm not going to let such things diminish my joy at having a new truck. It really is very nice... too bad you bums don't live in Atlanta or I'd give you a ride.
There is an interesting set of shows on Trio right now. It more-or-less covers the beliefs that I am using when authoring this web site. I think that any of you who know me are aware that the primary purpose of this web site is to entertain. Whether or not this stems from some sort of childhood deficiency in affection is entirely immaterial. I do encourage you to watch, if only to expose you to the underlying principles upon which this web site is run. If I could only pretend to imitate the people whom I linked above, I think that the purpose of this web site would be fulfilled.
There seems to be some bid from Larry Flynt for the half-naked pictures of some person name Amber. I think she had something to do with Laci Peterson... but anyway, she must be famous or Brit royalty because she is hideous. I am far more attracted to Greta van Susteren than this person. Whoever she is.
Speaking of attractive, I found out today that Justine Bateman is appearing in a new series on Showtime. I know that she is 37, but I'm 30 and I don't really think that I am out of the ballpark here. Also I do know that she recently had a baby, but I would once again like to express my feelings of being inside the ballpark on this. Justine, if you are reading this... write me.
OK, Justine, stop reading here. Close your browser and write me. Now... I would like to say to Sandra Bullock that this Justine Bateman thing means NOTHING! I just have these issues to work out, then you can come over for some tequila shots and Midnight Run II. On the Xbox. Bay-bee.
Since I am stuck at work right now and waiting on some actual work, I have been having fun managing my Korn shell environment, adding a .kshrc as my environment file and getting started on a directory to hold some autoloaded functions. I do realize that I have pretty much caused all of you to turn off your brain there. Sorry.
It's difficult coming up with things to talk about here that are entertaining to me and that are not offensive to my few readers. I'm not talking about the way Kristan is turned away by computer talk, either. I have to think about whether the topic will get me in trouble for some reason, either because it sounds bad or it is bad. I probably should not admit how hard this is. But really the big holdup is that I seem to get off on a rant during my commute, during which I cannot safely edit this web page. By the final piece of the ride, I have once again resigned myself to my fate and forget all about what was making me angry. Too bad for you.
If I could do that, this site would focus more on idiot drivers, which I think is something we all have as a common gripe. I don't think any of you have as long a commute as I do, but let me know if you do. Patrick has a slightly different set of complaints that nevertheless fall into the "Difficulty Getting to my Destination" department, such as the subway car that someone took a crap in; perhaps he will write in with a few. I always enjoy listening to blistering tales of stupid drivers, much like I enjoy the ones about novice computer users because I work in IT. Somehow I just can't think of a good one right now.
Perhaps it is because these inconsiderates just make me tired, unless I am stuck behind them, in which case I start inventing new forms of foul language. I could have a whole dedicated section if I could capture that stuff, but I think I can reduce it to just a few items, such as the person who drives in the left lane and paces a car in the right lane so that no one can pass. Kristan can understand that one, since Shaun does that. He does not know it, but when I found that out I almost ended the friendship. It's people like that who cause accidents, such as me accidentally getting in front of them by passing in the turning lane, then slamming on my brakes. You know, that sort of accident.
I have set up my vacation for the year already. We are hoping that Karen will feel up to it. Besides my ten vacation days, I have managed to gather up three comp days. One more and I will have the whole first week of July off. In the meantime, I continue to work a lot. I worked all weekend last weekend, and I am suspicious that I will do so again this weekend, but since I have been too busy to do any sort of planning, I'm really not sure! John Milton has urged me to come down this weekend, and I think I would except that I can't really leave Karen by herself in her condition. Perhaps I will be able to make it up by doing nothing other than the bare minimum.
I think I am getting close to obtaining a book review from Patty. I am hoping that he can inject a bit of intellectualism into this site, but the bitterness and wacky humor is bonus. He has a similar problem to mine in which it is often impossible to tell if he is serious or joking, however unlike me, he is still concerned about it. I will say right here and right now that I intend to merely publish his commentary as originally written, so there cannot be much in the way of ridicule from me. Unfortunately, I can't vouch for everyone who visits this gum-wad on the internet's shoe, but I do feel that he and I are the most angrified people here, so I think it will all be fine.
I found out today that Subaru has a pickup truck now. One more reason to NOT get the WRX, I suppose. I do have that 2003 Dodge Ram on the way, though, so I think I will just have to wait and see. My cousin Lance Armstrong is doing a great job of keeping that damn car on my mind; like an ex-smoker at the Waffle House, I just have to concentrate on the important stuff. Like my two vacations, week of comp time, and of course, impending fatherhood. I will just mention that the WRX STi is now available in the US. It does cost a little more, around $30k, but with a 300-hp turboed engine in a 3263-lb car, it might be worth it.
I called John Milton today to tell him about something exciting for my Xbox-owning friends who did not buy the PC version of Morrowind... which, if you are keeping score at home, would be ALL of them. Bethesda has just completed Bloodmoon, which will most likely be the final Elder Scrolls III expansion, and will be working to release the Game of the Year edition of Morrowind this fall for Xbox, which will include Tribunal and Bloodmoon. Of course they will toss in the appropriate tweaks they patched into the PC version, such as enemy health meters, Bitter Coast sound pack, and presumably the official plugins such as Siege at Firemoth. The journal improvement will not be included, and neither will the map-comments improvement, which I am led to believe would make sense if I had played the Xbox version for any length of time. So... yay!
I have a few game-related things aside from that, and like a sensible person, I will put them into the proper location. But my computer stuff, that goes on the front page until I decide otherwise. For example, I ordered a LinkSys switch, and after moving the plugs around a lot I managed to get both my company laptop and my personal rig connected to the DSL at the same time. Now I can open a tunnel to the Coke network and take care of business while I download stuff on my own rig... but mostly it keeps me from having to swap wires all the time. That was bothersome. I installed a UPS as well, but that's not exciting at all, even to me. The fact that I bought a new trackball for use with the laptop is only slightly less boring.
Done with another working weekend... missed Kristan, and so did Karen since she is so sick these days. Maybe I will get up to Kansas City one day, I want to go see that Crayola factory anyway.
Perhaps some of you were left wanting by Patrick's verbose review of The Matrix Reloaded. If you are of that set, here is his analysis of the movie from a literary perspective, pasted directly from my inbox:
The second seems to be the traditional heroic tale, just like the first, yet from a different perspective. In the first, he had to answer the "calling" of the hero-he had to learn that he was "the one". Reloaded is a continuation of the tale in that when the hero journeys to find out who he is, he must then face atonement with the father-in this case, the Architect. I will assume that the 3rd installment will be him saving humanity or being vanquished by a subsequent "hero". As for the Hulk, I see it as a conflict with the self. He gets angry; he likes it. But it is something that is dangerous to himself and others. Therefore it must be destroyed. Yet another heroic tale-from a different perspective. P
I can see that, at least concerning the first Matrix movie. It will be interesting to see if the archetypical elements are in the third movie, as Patty predicts. Of course, The Matrix is based on myth, just like a lot of other stories, so I'm sure he's got it. Plus I'm always happy when he is right, as long as it does not mean that I am wrong.
Style changes do not fall under the Site Revision parameters anymore, so we are still at v6.1.0.
Just back from my Memorial weekend and I feel somewhat rested. Back in January I would have thought this is "tired" but I know better these days. This is not the same tired you get from picking peas all day, it's a mental exhaustion. I did manage to get a bit of sleep while at Lake Burton despite the tiny bed and the wavy futon, but the rest that I needed was just to get away from any sort of responsibility for a couple of days. The only things I had to worry about were Karen and my lack of stereo sound from my GameCube.
In what might become a running segment, I'm posting Patrick's review of The Matrix Reloaded:
I saw The Matrix last night. Killer car chase. Roy Jones Jr is in it too! P
I have not seen it, but Patrick's gushing review is making me reconsider. I still think I can hold out until The Hulk comes out, thanks to X2. Seems like the origin story is a wee bit different than I remember it, plus there is Nick Nolte playing David Banner and Eric Bana playing Bruce Banner? Am I having some Hulk-like schiophrenia? The good news is that Lou Ferrigno is in the movie but he is NOT playing either the green or grey Hulk. At least the Fantastic Four are still going to get their powers through some good old cosmic rays, but I admit that makes for a better movie than the Hulk origin that I remember.
Really, though, the Hulk story is supposedly not too far off but they are changing a lot of character names. It is summed-up in the third post in this IMDB message board. I think I am still going to be somewhat confused, but at least now I can make myself a little laminated card to take into the theatre with me that outlines everyone's names.
I saw my truck last week. It is very red. It still needs some upholstery work but the body work is done. It is a 2003 Dodge Ram SL or SLT or SLX or whatever with the four doors and short bed, so it's only a couple feet longer than my current truck. It has just over 10,200 miles on it, too. It has a compass and a thingy that tells you your mileage, which is pretty depressing if you watch it. As I mentioned before, it has a six-disc CD player. It even comes with a tag, but I don't want to change my numbers and have to memorize another six. The best part of all is that it cost just $14,000. You might think that nothing good could come from someone leaving some sort of violent animal inside a rental truck while it eats the seats, and also manage to dent the side somehow, but as they say: one man's tragedy is another man's cheap truck.
I hope it fits in the garage.
There seems to be a lot of stuff going on, but not the sort of thing that fits into this web site's theme. If you are someone to whom this stuff is happening, I'm thinking about you even if I am not calling you right away. We all have jobs and responibilities and I don't want to be a bother.
Speaking of being a bother... I am looking for a UPS to arrive this week. That would be an uninterruptible power supply, for those of you who dislike computer talk. We had a good run of solid electricity delivery but last week we took a few outages of just a few seconds. My rig is connected directly to the grid, unfortunately, so I have taken to leaving it off unless I am using it so I can avoid the chance of corrupting the OS. It happened before, that's all I can say. So I found a $90 UPS which puts out 400 watts, then I also ordered a LinkSys 5-port switch for $36. I am going to see if I can get Coke to pay for the switch. My boss pointed out a $25 model at MicroCenter but I just have not had, and still don't have, the time to drive to Marietta. If I do get an afternoon, which I should on Friday, then I should order some more tile, and since I don't have the receipts anymore, I will have to drive to Northpoint Mall in Alpharetta.
I am glad I have a chance to squeeze out an update before I disappear for a much-needed holiday. I am working on yet another project-gone-south, however the business need for this work is of a "normal" urgency, so I can easily ignore the whining during non-business hours. Besides that, I have gathered a tremendous amount of credibility and leeway due to my prominence in the successes of the past few weekends. So I don't plan to be sitting here at 1701.
Summer is nearly here. It seems that one of the heralds of the warm weather in Hiram is the reemergence of Travis Tritt's llama. It has been holed-up somewhere, presumably in a barn but perhaps in the main house, but I saw it again this week. It was watching the traffic drive by, apparently bored stiff from a long winter of listening to Travis rehearse for his gig at the Bartow County Fair.
Let the trumpets sound! I have received my first link submission. For the sake of humor, I'll reprint his email in its entirety... minus the MSN8 avdertisement:
Indeed.
How is the website? Check out www.kgb.com(no promo, I just found it) for
some improvment ideas
P
I'm sure you are wondering just what he is responding to, and why he feels the need to go on and on about it. I wonder the same thing almost every email, since he never includes the previous text with his reply. I am assuming now, since even if I did figure out what he was talking about I certainly have forgotten what it was again, that he is refering to an email that I sent him, the gist of which was that I was glad that I had some lead in my pencil. I actually used the phrase "lead in my pencil" because it's funny. Jokes are even more funny when directed at Patrick because there is usually some sort of logical dissection of the joke in the reply, such as "I suppose the number of clowns you can fit into the car really depends on a number of variables" or some such stuff. Fascinating, I know.
The best part about that "lead in my pencil" email was that Patty forwarded it to my Mom. She wrote back that she was also glad I had some lead in my pencil. I'm starting to fear email from my family.
Has it really been this long since I wrote something here? Doesn't seem like it.
Turns out that Kristan will be here the weekend AFTER Memorial Day weekend, not the one before. I have to work that weekend as well.
I had some stuff to get all mad about, but right now all I want to do is take a nap. It is almost 4pm, so I will sneak out soon. Even though today is "Coca-Cola Chili Dog Day" at The Varsity, I just can't get excited about it. I have been working for over 20 solid days and it is time for a nap.
I have a few minutes, but not many, so let's get this thing started.
That's it for now. Call me.
I know this information will be lost on many of you, but since I keep getting into hot water when I try to be entertaining, this is what you get from me for the near future.
I have finally gotten around to studying the manuals for ViM and have made a lot of neat changes to my work environment. I started reading the manuals because I tried to use ViM to edit an exported registry file, only to find out that Windows 2000 exports the registry using Unicode. In the process of trying to find out how to have ViM read Unicode, I managed to learn a few other things which should save me plenty of time while writing programs and scripts. Too bad I finished up a couple already, but I am still working on a Perl prog for a security project.
I even figured out how to get PuTTY to use colors on these RS/6000 servers: basically I just had to tell the rs6k that my termtype is "aixterm" instead of the default "xterm". Now I have syntax highlighting while working on the servers, so my Korn shell scripts are more readable.
Speaking of that, I could use the 2html.vim script to convert my progs into HTML so that it shows up on my scripts page the way I see it on my terminal, but I think that would only be interesting to me. I'm sure that by now I have even lost my most technical potential-reader, Shaun. Since he's a Linux guy, he uses a GUI of some sort, KDE if I remember right, so fun things with terminals is not as entrenched in his hobby list as it is mine. We could use X Windows, and in fact some people do since certain apps are more GUI-prone, but for what I do a GUI is totally excessive. It would also hobble my already-loaded laptop.
For those of you who are not in my region, we had an earthquake this morning. I don't have any wacky stories of pandelerium in the trailer park, though. Basically it woke me up by vibrating the house, and consequently my mattress. It stopped after a few minutes, so I went back to sleep. Karen heard it but somehow managed to not feel the shaking, so she went back to sleep. I doubt Zuby woke up at all. It was about a 4.5 magnitude quake centered somewhere near Ft. Payne, Alabama.
I'm still trying to figure out where to put everything.
I know, site ugly, change soon.
Remember the web site I linked to back on March 14, the one which claimed Planet X would swoop by Earth on March 26? There was supposed to be some sort of catastrophe, possibly like the one dramatized in Thundarr the Barbarian. I was checking links during this rearrangement of my HTML files and decided to take a look at what was going on. Looks like their scientific calculations were off a little bit and the pole shift won't happen until 16 days from today. That's for the best, I think, because I had totally forgotten about Planet X. Now I have time to quit my job and take up several drug habits before the day of Earth's doom gets here.
I am happy to report that my dad should be leaving the hospital after a successful installation of a defibrillator. I talked to my mom last night and I could hear him happily complaining in the background, seems like he asked for two sandwiches but they would only bring him one.
I have loaned out my copy of "The Star Wars Holiday Special" to John Milton. I didn't really have the guts to watch it until he came over and we had a few beers. He was up in my office, letting me taunt him with the Tribunal expansion for Morrowind, when he happened to see the tape in one of my boxes. "The Star Wars Holiday Special?" he asks, picking it up. "Yeah, it has the first appearance of Boba Fett...", I say. "I know what it is. We're watching that tonight." Or something like that.
It was awful, and not just because Mark Hamil is a shitty actor. A ridiculous portion of the show is in Wookie-talk, without subtitles. I think Harrison Ford is the only one who is not drunk or high. By far the most enjoyable part is the animated portion which introduces Boba Fett, followed closely by Leia's lack of a bra. Actually, I take that back. The free-swinging boobs under her white dress-thing from the movie was better than the cartoon. However, we were enduring the mess for one big reason: so that we could tell Bill that we watched it.
You see, Bill has a bit of an obsession with Boba Fett. He had a mp3 of the animated portion of the Holiday Special, but he has never seen it, since the tape is so difficult to find. I'm tempted to side with Lucas in his crusade to eliminate all traces that it even existed, except that it is so bad it will make you laugh your ass off, particularly if you are a bit of a Star Wars fan. So we watched it. I asked John Milton if he wanted me to pause the tape during his bathroom and cigarette breaks, but he gave a loud "NO" each time. Even I had to go outside during the Diane Carrol number, and I discovered I needed another beer during the Bea Arthur number. Now we can stick it to Bill.
One of the notes in the "message of the day" window I see every morning mentioned the fact that The Coca-Cola Company built the first industrial wastewater treatment plant in Morocco. I don't know what sort of waste we make, but I'm sure it's fairly nasty.
Looks like Patrick has won the Caption Contest this round, but I'll leave the picture up for a bit in case someone wants to take another shot at it.
I know I have not been working on the site a lot. Been busy. Worked all weekend and today I had a presentation to participate in. I will try to get this thing whipped into shape, I promise. Also, I don't know if anyone has emailed me pictures because I have not checked my personal email account, which is the one I list here. I suppose I should use my work address since I get about 25 spam messages a day anyway.
You can still send me comments about the site, but I need to ask you to stop sending your comments to Karen. I'm sure she doesn't want to take messages for me, and the fact that it seems most people are confusing my web persona with my real persona is not helping matters. I'm not sure if I am just not getting my points across properly or if there is some sort of deficiency in reading comprehension amongst my readership, but really there is probably a combination of both problems... so rather than continue to try to entertain people, I'm just going to have to tone it down so that people quit asking Karen why I am so mad about life and how could she put up with me, and so forth. Now, for the ones out there that have trouble understanding the words I am typing:
Karen cannot do anything about what I put on this site, so all you are doing is making her miserable. I don't like for my wife to be miserable so please stop it. This site is causing me some pain right now, so you will have to live with the old-style geek talk for a while, until such time that I am able to start entertaining you all again.
Perhaps the new look has entertained you, especially the silver style. If you are not sure what I am talking about, try refreshing the page with F5 and you should notice it. I am going to work on the original style first, and once it looks half-ass I will work on the silver one. I'd tell you about the changes but you can read the source if you are interested. From here on out, however, most of the improvements should be in the style sheet instead of the HTML document. If anyone is curious, I will be happy to link to the style sheet for you.
What a week. I got through today without yelling at anyone, too. Well, it's only 14:18 so I should be careful saying that.
The run-down for the week is that I finally had a line run from my propane tank to my house on Tuesday, and now my grill is working! Of course we seem to have misplaced the part that the meat lays on, but in the grand scheme that is a rather minor issue. Worst case, I can rig up something with coat hangers, but I can also just buy another rack. On Wednesday, I had the outlets fixed in the garage workroom, the last piece of tile grouted in the upstairs bath, and the broken pipes in the garage were repaired. After all these months, I can finally squirt water from my garage.
I was all set to work from home on Wednesday, but before 8:00 chimed, I was on the cell phone with BellSouth telling them that my line was dead. I did get some work done, finishing a short program I had been working on for way too long, but I did it at Karen's office. I also had to drive a chair around in my truck, and a few other odd things like rotate the laundry and clean the countertops. Later that afternoon, Karen and I went to dinner with Eric at Dave and Buster's, getting home just before 22:00. I finished off the evening by trying to play just a little Ocarina of Time, but came to bed at 1:45. So I'm a bit tired.
I have to work this weekend, however as of the meeting this morning, I don't have to drive in, so that's good. Karen will give me chores to do, of course, but I think I should be able to shirk most of that stuff. Complaining about a lack of a weekend gets me nowhere, but since I seem to get in trouble once or twice a week anyway, I think I can avoid some chores in relative safety. Of course, she does not have Good Friday off, so if her internet connection is fixed, she will probably read this and concoct extra chores for me. Oh well.
It didn't take Karen long to read this. I'm talking mere minutes after I finished the ftp. Her impression is that I think I should not have to do the work that other husbands do. This is not true, there is quite a bit that I need to do around the house, but the thing is that usually Karen tells me to do things before I get around to doing them. There are several reasons for this but I don't think any of them are particularly un-husbandly except for my tendency to procrastinate, perhaps. One big reason is that I seem to do things wrong or in the wrong order. I don't mind being directed, but I either need direction or I need to be left to my own devices. Unfortunately my own devices are lazy, and I know that I will be told what to do if I just stand around. I know it is weird but I'd rather have her tell me what to do up front than start on my own project and then have to change things because I made a bad decision. Plus I'm lazy. Let's not forget that.
I don't know why Karen puts up with me.
Yes, when I said I have to work this weekend, I did mean that my team has to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday during Easter weekend. This is because HR put the kibosh on the previous power-outage weekend, and they did that because they were busy computing severance packages for the recent layoffs. Coke was not always full of jerks, this is a fairly new thing. The worst part about all of the layoffs last August and March is that the company made a profit of $4 billion for 2002 and has hired several new executives; three were announced today. Also today, I believe, the dividends were announced. Happy Easter, assholes.
Hello. How are you? I am fine.
Nothing interesting today, really. Went to the Dogwood Festival on Saturday, had a good time. Went with Karen, Josh, Kaley, Heather, Zuby, Oakley, Astra, Penny, and Lucy. The last five names belong to dogs. It was Zuby's first time in a crowd that large or in the city, but she had a great time.
Sunday was just yard work. I picked up a lot of crap that the builders decided to throw into the back yard instead of walking around front to toss into the dumpster; the junk was hard to see, I'll give them credit for that, unfortunately the lawnmower finds these things easily enough. The last thing it managed to find was some leftover electrical wiring.
Today is Spring Break Friday and practically no one is working today. I got to work in 45 minutes, parked on the lower floor of the deck, and so far no one has asked me to do anything today. The only downturn so far was driving through that overflowing sewage at the CVS on Bankhead Highway. Some of you may know the place I am talking about: it's the underwater MARTA stop across from the junkyard near Bowen Homes. I don't mind driving through water, except when it smells like poo.
Saw the Cirque Du Soleil show Varekai on Wednesday night. It was great, almost as good as their La Nouba show at Downtown Disney in Orlando, but that would be a subjective call. I liked La Nouba because it was just freaky. Varekai was freaky as well, but somehow not as much. I did enjoy the sea-creature portion, with the sliding and the colors and the little anemones. Karen and I went with Josh, Kaley, Heather and Tim... and Karen gave Tim this web address, so I now have two more people to offend. I'll give them some time to read the old stuff before I start ranting about The Man or calling out to the subcultures to rise up.
Speaking of subcultures, I really, really, really need to find a theater that is showing the Cowboy Bebop movie, something closer than Washington, D.C. would be fantastic. You would think that the Madstone multiplex would have it but firstly, they are not open yet, and secondly they want to get a good following and are therefore showing popular-artsy films like Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction, plus some other junk. I am going to sign up on their web site since they look like the most likely venue to pick up an anime movie. Somehow, there are six Indian films showing in Atlanta over the next five weeks, but no Cowboy Bebop. I feel like Dark Helmet in Spaceballs.
If anyone clicked on the link in the word Pulp and is curious how I turned out... I'm Jimmy.
If some of you are not sure what Cowboy Bebop is, it is an animated television series from Japan. Unless you have spent a whole lot of time watching anime, you have not seen anything like it. Personally, I think it is by far the best series ever released, but it does have a larger-than-normal American appeal. It doesn't have giant robot battles or little girls in school uniforms, there are no unidentifiable cute sidekicks or magical powers, and overall is fairly realistic within the futuristic space-travel setting. Like most anime series, there are only 26 episodes and we have them in a DVD box set, so you should feel free to come over and watch some of it with us. It was on Cartoon Network for a while, so perhaps you have seen a bit of it already. You really need to watch the whole series, it is pretty deep.
I changed out the caption picture. I suppose that entry was almost as old as the subject. The new picture was submitted by Josh and Karen from the "Guess Who's on the Milk Carton" department.
I have been busy today and now I am tired. I'll change the caption picture later, it's harder than you might think. Just to show you that I still love you, I'll change out the main picture.
It is 3:21pm and I was about to leave when Karen said I should work until 4:45pm. I'm not sure what sort of Bizarro World it is that I now live in, but my wife is harder on me about leaving work early than my boss. It's not that I don't have anything to do, it's just that I won't do it today, even if I continue to sit here. I'm even too tired to surf the net, and almost too tired to play The Legend of Zelda. If, once I get home, it turns out I am too tired to play Zelda, I can always play Animal Crossing and drink Rolling Rock.
I'd like to remind the Peanut Gallery that the Caption Contest area is only for captions... as if I would bother to enforce that. I'm sure you all realize that I can edit the comments, but of course I don't, I think they are all funny in some way. Unfortunately the only caption that made me giggle more than Belkster's was my own, and even more unfortunately, you all have to compete with me as well. I might go through and pick some individual winners in the Caption archives, but like I said already, I'm tired. Maybe later, when someone sends me a funny picture.
In case no one bothers to look at the little ¤ symbol on the menu, there is a new Opinion Pole. I know I spelled that wrong. Give me some credit.
My plan to sneak out of work early today is meeting with some resistance. Pretty heavy resistance, actually. Darn my work ethic.
Do yourself a favor and be sure to click on all of today's links.
I was pretty sure I had something neat to say, but darnit, it has left my brain. Instead of something cool, informative, or entertainingly aggravating, you are stuck with a preliminary description of my Foul Language Substitution Project. I will pretend I work for a standards organization and come up with some well-thought-out-but-completely-arbitrary rules, after which I will take far too long to start adhering to those standards. So here is the first draft layout, using the Censorship Standard that I implemented this week:
I am willing to entertain further submissions from the readership.
Someone asked about how to win the Caption Contest and what sort of prize there is. I do realize that for a long time there was no sort of winner, but I maintain that you only have yourselves to blame since I was happy just being entertained by the whole thing. Now that there is a winner, the losers are asking how they might also win. The trick is that there is only one judge and you need to make that judge laugh. Not necessarily a lot, just more than the other people. In fact, you can win if your caption is just the least stupid. Now that you know how to win, your losership is in your own hands. Anyone who is curious about the prize should make more effort to win. Anyone who thinks losers should get a prize should move to France, and take Alec Baldwin with you.
You might think that I would have a problem with Johnny Depp. He is so liberal that he moved from California to France, unlike Alec Baldwin who just talks a bunch of spap-oop but still enjoys his cushy life provided by the American economy, which is driven by big business and, by extension, the Republican Party. I might disagree with Depp-san's beliefs but I have total respect for him because he backs up his beliefs with action. People who hate America, no matter the reason, should be willing to back up their yap with action. For that reason, I have a lot of respect for Johnny Depp. Alec Baldwin is a fu-fu.
I can't move out of PC, so I go along with the majority even when I disagree. There are quite a few things I would like to change in the government, but things are pretty good overall. There is not another place I would rather live, so I take the bad with the good. It follows my guiding principles of "if it feels good, do it" and "if you don't like it, change it; if you can't change it, don't worry about it". Life is too short to worry about things you can't change, and if something really bothers you then do something about it and shut the muck-luck up.
J-Cool actually had the Caption Champ title, then Belkster came out swinging. Maybe next time.
Looks like there are a couple of unpopular topics in the Caption Contest: monkeys and sports. The sports pictures are in debate amongst the readership, but nobody likes the monkey. After a decent period of time, I will change things around a bit.
The long-standing Favorite Reader, Kristan, has asked for the reason behind my general abrasiveness lately. Karen's answer was, I think, that I am just stressed at work. My answer, as you might expect, is more complex but the short version is that I'm not really mad, I'm just web-mad.
In person, I'm just as agreeable and nice as usual. This web page is my release for the things that are weighing on my mind, and while I have never liked the self-censorship I have practiced the whole time, such things are very important when one's wife reads the rantings. A good case to exemplify that would be the recent hassle over my opinions on generic handicap-only parking and usage of foul language. Anyway, lately I have been letting the censorship slip a bit, and I have been doing it on purpose. This makes me seem more angry on top of the fact that I use this site as a vent for my stress.
I can't actually write about work-related stuff on this site. A lot of the stuff I do is either confidential or quasi-confidential. Not necessarily because it is overly technical, either. In fact the most bothersome problems are bureaucratic issues. Any of you who have worked for a multi-billion-dollar global corporation probably know exactly what I am talking about, but Coca-Cola is considered to be on the extreme end of the bureaucratic scale among its corporate peers. At some point you just sort of stop reading the project plans and PowerPoint presentations and start just listening for your name in meetings.
I spend two hours a day driving. I do write a little about traffic, but it's all in the Atlanta Travel Guide. I have overcome my road rage so I don't have a lot to say even though it provides some irritation for the day. Various other things increase the stress levels a bit through the work day but overall they are outweighed by the fantasy life I am living.
Finally, this web site is supposed to be entertaining. It is not entertaining if I show up and say something like "yeah, things are great today, I got to go to lunch and no one called me to have me do work, and I got to sit around and work on script code or my web site, blah blah blah" or other such bland things. I am able to keep Kristan and others entertained when I talk about various angry sounding topics. It's like saying that Dennis Miller is just "TV angry", because that's what he is. I'm sure he is a perfectly nice guy in person.
I hear your complaints about the construction. I find that they are not as loud as the complaints about the placeholder site, so much like our elected officals I caved to the vocal minority. Blame them if you don't like the wackyness while I try to get this working the way I want.
I am also going to utilize the green links for another purpose besides useless extra information. I'm going to use it to give a bit of a buffer for those who don't like foul language. As some of you might be aware, I have always tended to keep the profanity to a minimum on this site, mostly out of respect for Karen's friends who occasionally read this crap. My personal belief is that "bad words" are a form of censorship, and an arbitrary one at that. The idea that it is OK to say "butthole" but not OK to say "asshole" is ridiculous, since they mean the same thing. Just think about people who use words like crap, doo-doo, screw, and gol'dang, and you might realize that they are making the same derrogatory statements no matter their choice of words. Similarly, some people are happy with cursing in a foreign language but would never use the American version. Perhaps they don't realize that caca and merde both mean shit, so calling someone a caca-head has a very obvious meaning. If you think about this for long enough, you will probably realize that these are all tools to convey ideas and that the ideas behind the words are the important bit.
My original point was that I will apply a liberal censoring to this site, however I will put the word I had in mind inside the green text. With this buffer, as well as the disclaimer you have probably seen by now, I'm going to write more in my natural style. This is not something that has been seen on the site before. I hope you enjoy it.
You might have noticed something weird with the colors lately. I have come up with some decent code, stolen from the O'Reilly JavaScript book and modified for my purposes, but there is a problem with co-ordinating the two frames and that causes the color mismatches. I am also writing a cookie to your computer now, so if you don't allow cookies then your color choice will not be saved. That might be OK with you, but the default is the usual black scheme.
The designs are a totally separate deal. Right now I think the silver one does not look too bad, but I have put those changes on hold until I get the part where you pick your colors to work right. I'll let you know when I will start giving a hoot about your style suggestions.
I hope you arrived safely. Site work is ongoing, as per usual.
I don't feel like it today.