my poor old car | Juno Reactor - Pistolero 2009-02-12 12:55:46 |
Storage charges will accrue daily until the vehicle is released.- -the notification letter
About a week ago, I saw the postman coming down the walk, and he handed me a certified letter from a towing company in San Marcos. They had my car, and wanted $286.50 for fees. Apparently whoever had purchased it had never changed the title over. My brother-in-law and I went down yesterday to have a look, and a sad sight met our eyes. Mechanically, as far as I could tell, the car was exactly how I sold it four years ago - even the odometer read the same within a couple of hundred miles. Cosmetically, it was horribly maimed. Someone had painted the entire car, even the chrome, with dull black spray paint (and it had pretty nice black paint when I sold it). Both turn signals were missing and replaced with crazy wire and yellow cellophane contraptions. The inside of the car was full of stuff - all fairly neatly packed as if someone had been moving (versus living in the car, but who knows), and the front seat was reclined nearly all the way back. It was locked, and of course I no longer had the key. The stunted little man who let us in said it had been towed from an apartment complex.
After Erroll and I had our look, we went back to the office, and I asked what the fees were. The woman behind the counter (who to her credit had been quite polite to us the entire time) rustled through some paperwork and said $550 something. I said "Oh no, that's too much, thanks!" and turned and left. I think the woman was fully expecting us to get our car back, and she said "Oook" as we left. Anyway, it was strangely sad to see my neat old 500SEL so hideously ruined. The reason why someone felt the need to cover the car in black spray paint eludes me. I guess there is someone out there missing a carload of stuff too.
my iPhone review | Sasha and John Digweed - Northern Exposure Vol. 1 2008-11-11 11:06:22 |
These waves happen all around us now...radio waves, television channels, X-rays....- - "These Waves"- Young American Primitives
1. No MMS. This is a giant, glaring, nearly deal-killing fault. Why this was left out is a mystery, since it's really a crucial part of having a phone with a camera. Picture transmission, HELLO!! Yes, you can email pictures very easily, but receiving them is right out, and other phones find it pretty hard to email pictures. Apple really screwed up here.
2. The battery life is really bad. In my normal usage, it lasts about a day. I've started off in the morning fully charged, and at 7 PM it's been down to 10%. I've left it fully charged and off the charger overnight and the next morning the battery has been down to 30% (without any network use as far as I know). This is with normal calling, internet use, etc. The Treo always lasted at least two days, sometimes three, but with less internet use. The iPhone will charge from a USB port so I just leave it plugged in all the time at my desk.
3. It's rather difficult to get custom ringtones working. I have a pile of MIDI files I used on all my other phones, and on the iPhone (which won't play MIDI) I have to convert them to a .wav in iTunes, edit with Audacity to less than 30 seconds, save as an mp3, change the extension, then reimport to iTunes. Also, you can't change the SMS tone at all from the four or five default tones.
4. Safari crashes occasionally and has no Flash support, which is annoying sometimes.
5. I can't stream from my server's mp3 stream (which uses ampache). Other Internet radio stations work fine though.
6. No cut and paste, which I occasionally used.
7. No tethering. I could tether my Treo via Bluetooth with a little work, and it came in handy once or twice. With the ubiquity of wireless access points, this is less of a concern than it used to be.
That's all the bad stuff I've found so far. Everything except the lack of MMS I can deal with. Now for the lovely good stuff:
1. The interface is everything people say it is, and more. Intuitive, easy, functional, I can't say enough. Apple has always excelled in this area and this is no exception. There are some minor inconsistencies in where functions are located on different screens but you really don't notice.
2. The App Store makes this phone really, really useful. Everything I knew I needed (except MMS) and some things I didn't realize I needed can be found there. Some are free, some cost money, but the wealth of applications is exciting. The games are fun too, even the free ones.
3. Email works great and is easy to use on my IMAP server.
4. The wireless and GPS connectivity are wonderful. I especially like that applications can use the GPS information.
5. The keyboard and text recognition work just fine once one gets used to it. Occasionally the text recognition gets in the way, but for the most part it helps you type rather faster.
6. The camera is just fine except in really low-light situations.
So in short, I have a love-hate relationship with the iPhone. If it had MMS and a better battery, it would be more of a love-slight dislike relationship.
anniversary | BH Surfers - Electriclarryland 2008-11-06 08:39:57 |
The jingle of a dog's collar would be good right here.- BH Surfers
value as a function of credit | Boards of Canada - Trans Canada Highway 2008-10-22 12:11:57 |
A lesson from Duck Tales- Duck Tales
As for the monitors, I tried to give them away for a couple of months, and finally left them on the curb with the garbage. They sat there for a couple of days and finally the garbagemen picked them up. I have a couple of perfectly functional four- or five-year old computers about to suffer the same fate because no one wants them for any reason. I am curious to see if the restriction of credit has any effect on this (although last evening at Home Depot, they had delegated an employee to ask customers if they wanted to refinance their house, so apparently it's business as usual).
the death of the iPod | U2 - B-Sides 2008-10-10 08:22:56 |
All roads lead to where you are.- U2
The thing is, I find myself not using it much. I've ripped my CDs to mp3, and put them all on an external drive plugged into the server. I use Amarok in the house to play music, and when I'm traveling, I just stream from the server on my laptop. When I haven't got my laptop, I stream through my Treo using Pocket Tunes (the only non-free part of this) and Ampache. I use the mp3 player on airplanes, and that's really about it. It all sounds a little complicated, and it is, but I predict plug and play solutions as the wireless network increases in bandwidth. The nice thing is that this was all fairly inexpensive - the software is all free except Pocket Tunes for the Treo, which cost about $40. The server of course cost a little, but any old computer will work for this, with Linux (I like OpenSuse or Ubuntu) and Apache installed (which it usually is by default). Amarok is awesome and free. Ampache is also free. The Treo itself I purchased used from Craigslist for $150. The data plan for it is $20 a month, give or take. High-speed internet at this point is pretty much a given (and one of the nice things about Ampache is that you can downsample, and stream everything at 96 or 128 kbps, well within the means of most upstream DSL connections). Costs all taken together with the exception of the data plan and assuming the repurposing of an older computer, my setup costs less than an iPhone. It's not hard to set up, although it does take a little work, but now that I have it, I find the iPod becoming just a device for niche use when no internet connectivity at all exists. That situation is becoming quite rare these days.
ramirez! | Paul Oakenfold - Ramirez-Hablando 2008-08-25 13:25:16 |
What is this?- everyone
etc.
Now, in context - the flasks are from the old IQA lab at Hitachi, and are about the only artifacts I have from my years working on the S-806 SEM there. The piece of wood is the one we gleefully sawed off at our wedding, in the game organized by Dirk and Claudia. The bottle was the $200 bottle of wine Marcelo and I accidentally ordered at the old Mezzaluna restaurant on Colorado (it was good though). The LED array is a binary clock Anne gave me for my birthday years ago, and makes me feel like a smart person explaining it to guests. All these things must be saved and organized and made to look attractive!
burglars | Jane's Addiction - Ritual De Lo Habitual 2008-08-22 15:55:11 |
Is it Friday already?- The Usual Suspects
I bet they took something really annoying, like the microwave!
feature creep | Orbital - Live at Glastonbury 2008-07-25 11:44:58 |
"The icemaker takes up too much room!"- my lovely wife
Anyway, I don't know what the real point of this story is...it's not that you shouldn't buy large appliances online, but in any sort of emergency you should be prepared to take what you can get and don't fixate on integrated water dispensers and ice makers unless you're prepared for three weeks of non-refrigerated food.
on the road | Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights 2008-06-06 11:44:32 |
On the road again -
Just cant' wait to get on the road again..- Willie Nelson
My flight out of Dulles into Denver left at 6 AM (Eastern) and I dragged myself out of bed at 3:45. I made it to Colorado Springs around 9 AM (Mountain). I called the guy who was picking me up, and it turned out he'd just locked himself out of the house and had to go to where his wife worked to get his extra set of keys. So I waited and walked around the airport in the wonderful May weather, with Pike's Peak looming in the background, until he arrived. We did the deal, went to lunch at a brew pub (no brew for me, of course, worse luck because it looked pretty tasty), and I managed to get the bike packed with the ugly duffel bag crammed into the side case, my backpack bungeed to the luggage rack and the GPS fastened more or less securely to the handlebars. I motored out of Colorado Springs around 4 PM and headed south down IH-25. The scenery was beautiful, and the weather was fine, and there wasn't much traffic. I meant to stop and take many more pictures than I actually did, but either I forgot or there wasn't a good place to stop.
One of the first things I noticed was that my throttle hand kept going numb, from my gloves I suppose which were a bit too large. The Throttlemeister helped a lot with this, and after figuring that out I was much more comfortable. I rode down out of the mountains and into New Mexico, and at Raton I left 25 and headed down 87 towards Amarillo. I passed the Capulin volcano, but by this time it looked like I was about to get rained on. I suddenly realized I didn't know if my backpack (with my laptop inside) was waterproof, so I hurried past without taking a picture. There was as nearly as possible no one on the roadsAbout 9 PM (Central) I arrived in Clayton, NM, and stopped at the Kokopelli Best Western, which turned out to be pretty nice, and after getting the bike up on its center stand for the first time (which took some effort and pinched off a piece of the sole of my boot....obviously I did it wrong) I took off the side cases and backpack, dropped everything on the floor of my room and collapsed into a deep and well-deserved sleep.
Saturday morning I ate a quick breakfast and got back on the road about 8AM. I went through Amarillo and headed south on 27 for Tulia, where I got on 86 to Silverton where my dad lives. I stayed there Saturday night, and got back on the road early Sunday, after some comedy in getting the bike out of my dad's gravel driveway...deep gravel.
I had been following a cold front nearly the whole way, with the resulting 40MPH or so wind on the plains buffeting me around. I rode through Turkey and noticed it was getting steadily colder as I reached Roaring Springs. I saw 45 degrees on a bank sign at one point, and the heated grips were coming in handy. Things warmed up though and by the time I reached Abilene, it was a balmy day. I ate lunch at a Subway and then started on the last stretch south towards home. It was getting hot as I reached Goldthwaite, and by the time I neared Austin I had my jacket unzipped and the visor open. I had to stop and fumble around for change on the 183-A toll road, but after that I cheered up and zipped home, pulling into my driveway around 5 PM. The trip odometer read just over a thousand miles.
i zoom | Fluke - Oto 2008-05-19 11:23:16 |
You'll put your eye out.- A Christmas Story
The answer to this problem was (as the answer to any problem should be) a motorcycle. I had a battered 1986 Honda Rebel 450 for a few years in school, that I put about 23,000 miles on, but I wanted something nicer this time and settled on a 2004 BMW R1150RT, with about 13,000 miles that turned up in the Cycle Trader. The settling process was long and involved. When I called about this particular bike, it turned out the owner was in the Army and had just relocated to Colorado Springs, CO, with the bike. I initially dismissed it but after several other prospects failed to pan out, I began thinking Colorado wasn't all that far away.
Everything then fell into place and I ended a business trip to Washington, DC by returning not to Austin but to Colorado Springs, met the seller and the bike, was pleased as punch with everything, and did the deal. I'll post the story later!
canned history | Global Communication - 76:14 2008-05-02 14:14:43 |
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.- George Santayana
let the words be free | Massive Attack - Mezzanine 2008-03-27 19:16:34 |
Journal- xkcd
All that being said, my wife (who, when asked, admitted she doesn't read this) has started her own blog. Unlike me, she has an audience. (I find myself slightly jealous, even though the audience is just my large extended family.) It's quite good, I think, I have actually found myself having a look in the afternoons to see if she's put anything else down for the day (although it gets rehashed between us in the evening anyway). Now if I can just help her figure out her MP3 player, we might actually start living in the 21st century here (I'm just kidding, Mel, I love you :))
Haiku No. 2 | Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet 2008-02-19 17:18:21 |
-
a bit of vacation | Fluke - Switch/Twitch 2008-02-18 10:30:21 |
Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!- The Wizard of Oz
I spent a nice peaceful weekend hanging out and having fun and then drove back to Nashville Sunday. On the way back that afternoon (which was very nice - cold, breezy, and sunny) I saw more of the damage: a thicket of pine trees all snapped off about 10-15 feet high, wads of heavy debris in trees and hedgerows, a line of people walking through a field that had apparently once contained a house but now exhibited only shredded furnishings smeared colorfully across the trampled grass. There is a fine line between drinking beer and napping comfortably on a chaise lounge in a sunroom and being reduced to animal survival (if one is so lucky) after having the whole thing thrown down around your ears in a tornado.
But such thoughts were banished quickly - I had a great time (thanks!) and my opinion of Memphis improved considerably (in many ways it's like Austin). The food and drink and rest and companionship were excellent, and there were no tornadoes, so what more could one ask for a bit of vacation?
word is the enemy of English | Gallant Lady - Ken Henry and Don Keith 2008-01-24 14:05:30 |
Let your fingers do the walking.- Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages slogan
The control appears to be designed appropriately.
then my fingers know just what to do and I can type it quite fast. Word, with its autocorrecting, encourages my fingers to do strange things like constantly type "desinged", because it autocorrects and I don't have to go back to type it again the right away. Encouragement of bad habits leads to typing anarchy!!
'
the last day of 2007 | Fluke - Tosh 2007-12-31 17:59:00 |
For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.- Doug Larsen
But new years bring new breezes, and it's up to you to make something of what the wind carries.
not much difference when you think about it | Silversun Pickups - Carnavas 2007-11-15 14:42:12 |
-
doctor who is required | Ravel - Bolero 2007-11-12 16:43:53 |
When you have some guy dressed in a fish suit with a bowl on his head you had better have some story to go with it.- me
KLRN aired Doctor Who at 9:30 or 10 PM on weeknights, so I very rarely got to watch. My dad spent quite a lot of time recording the shows for me - I'm sure he must have been fairly sick of it after a few months. (Remember this was back in the day, when VCRs didn't have reliable programming and no One-Touch Record - was I ever excited when that feature appeared - so he had to start and then stay up to stop it.)
The new episodes are not bad, but Daleks seemed a lot scarier in black and white. There were other touches like the mind-eating Krotons, and the forest of words, and the Mechanoids, which were just weird. (Too bad they're gone for good, at the end of the episode their city burned like Styrofoam.) The Doctor had to arrange Jamie's face which had been turned into puzzle pieces in The Mind Robber, and he got it wrong. There aren't any wicked little touches like that these days. Yes, the production values are better, but good production is a dangerous crutch for writers.
once more into the breach! | Mazzy Star - Into Dust 2007-11-06 19:40:01 |
Go ahead, Steve, tell us your lame excuse.- Aqua Teen Hunger Force
This wasn't as egregiously rude as the last one, but still funny. I'm looking forward to a lot more of this as the holiday stress takes hold in everyone except me. I'm staying out of it all, of course - I don't think I set foot in a retail area last year for any of my Christmas shopping. The Internet is my friend. This Christmas is going to be fun! We've rented a large party house and I've brewed 10.5 gallons (that's 40 lovely liters folks) of beer. Say goodbye to stress, and hello to the holidays!
I can has parking? | Snow Patrol - Shut Your Eyes 2007-09-20 20:04:54 |
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.- Hanlon's razor
garage lifting | Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3 2007-09-19 12:25:48 |
How could they walk away with a two-foot-tall umbrella vase without anyone noticing?- one of us
But the things that sold and didn't sell surprised me. Some old lady bought a bunch of computer parts, but not the nice stuff, only the old serial cards and modems and 2MB video cards. People completely ignored the stroller but bought baby clothes. Melanie had several unopened packages of Pullups she was selling for half price, which no one wanted. At some point someone stole one package. A couple of years ago people descended on us and caused a diversion while the garage sale crew backing them up took anything they could grab that wasn't nailed down. This is not valuable stuff we're selling - old wineglasses, pots, picture frames, ancient hard drives, a fifth-hand copy of "V" on VHS....typical garage sale junk, yet it seems people will steal it if they can. To be fair though we weren't all that peeved (except for the umbrella vase, which wasn't ours) since generally we just donate anything we don't sell at the end of the day.
the winds of war | Depeche Mode - Behind The Wheel 2007-08-22 12:47:05 |
This huge two part miniseries was said to have been the 'last of the miniseries'.
three's a crowd | Depeche Mode - Policy of Truth single 2007-07-29 10:05:24 |
"Just wanted to find out some opinions on trail mix. Is this stuff ok?"
every day is like Sunday | The Sundays - Here's Where The Story Ends 2007-07-24 14:42:43 |
"I don't know how many times I've thought, "I don't like the Pogues" and then I hear a song and say, hey that's pretty good, later to find its a Pogues tune...."- Radio Paradise comments
black and white | Banco De Gaia - Last Train to Lhasa 2007-07-22 11:21:12 |
"Long story," said Ron.- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
a whole lotta nothing...but wait, there's more! | Stereophonics - "Moviestar" 2007-07-17 13:06:27 |
"[stupid article about hacking an ATM by entering cardinal numbers] 1 2 3 4 5 - Why, that's the same combination as my luggage! ORDER THE INVASION! And change the code on my luggage!"- user Evil-Dragon on digg.com, cribbing from Spaceballs
on the road | Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler - "Right Now" on Radio Paradise 2007-07-13 17:37:45 |
Important: Installation...of non-BMW approved accessories...may cause extensive damage to the vehicle....or affect the validity of the BMW limited warranty.- BMW sticker
Haiku No. 1 | Aphex Twin - SomaFM - Space Station Soma 2007-06-06 10:24:58 |
Music soothes taut nerves
but some days are Aphex Twin days
and some are not.- Me
the sound and the fury | Sounds From the Ground - Kin (on SomaFM) 2007-06-05 11:13:10 |
Once I take care of the humans, I will start my war...against the bees!- Invader Zim
stick it to the man | The Lash - "Lucky One" played on Radio Paradise 2007-03-12 21:14:19 |
When you download MP3s, you're downloading communism!- Anonymous
a little crazy | Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 2007-03-09 21:07:38 |
I agree with you dude, but you sound a little crazy.- -user "trubbleshute" on digg.com
all things come | Fluke - Puppy 2007-03-02 18:36:01 |
Beware the fury of a patient man.- John Dryden
So years passed, and I occasionally wondered what happened in Infinity. Imagine my joy when I discovered it had been released as an open source game by Bungie. I just now installed it on my Ubuntu system, and it works great, and after all these years i finally get to hear the end of the story. The super added bonus is that I can also replay the original Marathon! Fun fun fun!
guess who's back | The The - 45RPM 2007-02-11 13:44:35 |
Change is the illusion of progress.- unknown
do you have a joystick? - 04/17/04 16:21:10 CDT
White Stripes - White Blood Cells
Here's the next game in the old game series: Thexder. This game on our old Tandy 1000 was pretty cool, I thought - it had wonderful 4-channel music (which unfortunately seems to be lost forever, as it only plays single tones on the PC speaker now). Some of the levels were really interesting, as well. I was severely disappointed when I got to the end, though. After all that work!!
which OS are you? - 04/17/04 16:08:22 CDT
- Master and Commander Soundtrack
I was a little surprised at this, but upon reflection it seemed appropriate.
thothware - 03/06/04 16:17:11 CST
- Myst Soundtrack
"Durandal's last instructions were for us to reactivate a dormant Sph't AI..."
- Marathon 2:Durandal
I was digging through some old 5-1/4" floppy disks a while back and found one full of games we used to play on the old Tandy 1000 EX. Yes, those were the days. (I still have the daisywheel printer from that system, works great.) Anyway, for some reason playing these antique games from 1986 reminded me of the scene from Marathon 2 where you have to reactivate the ancient computer. I can't believe any of this stuff still runs under Windows XP, but they do, sometimes really super fast. Anyway, I'm gonna post one every now and then for my faithful reader(s). Here's Spacewar by B. Seiler, which we played to the point of epilepsy when we were kids. Too bad the opening credits run so fast, because I always thought they were pretty cool. More to come, although this one is probably the best...I wish someone would port it to Linux.
knoppix is good pix - 03/03/04 18:07:52 CST
Charlatans UK - Us and Us Only
Es ist keinerlei Installation auf Festplatte notwendig. Auf der CD k�nnen durch transparente Dekompression bis zu 2 Gigabyte an lauff�higer Software installiert sein.
-http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index.html
I'm running Knoppix at the moment, quite impressed with it actually, and debating what to do about the server. Does it get FreeBSD, SuSE, Gentoo, or what, and once I've decided that, then the fun's just starting. EVMS, neoMail, PHP5, mySQL 4.whatever, oh yes! and the projects that will ensue are mind-boggling. Of course, I don't have the time to do any of this anyway, slaving away at Dell, but at least it gives me something to think about to take my mind off urine-soaked computers. Someone must have been quite upset that day.
resolution revolution - 01/02/04 16:49:35 CST
White Stripes - Elephant
The more I watch, the more I learn...
- Course of Empire
It's a new year, and I have no resolutions. I've decided that if it's not important enough to be on the list already, then the hell with it - my life's too cluttered already. The list is long and daunting - get rid of junk, fight the black dog, and make things work, beginning with my laptop modem and ending with the Fiat. Nothing new here...just resetting the trip meter and reloading the Matrix.
grind - 12/17/03 18:31:44 CST
The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom
This is not my idea of a good time.
-Garbage
It's winter again. Promises to be dreary this year, what with me working 60 hours a week and the lack of anything exciting happening. I did get Linux installed and running on my laptop, so that was rather exciting. Hooray for me.
home alive - 08/16/03 14:06:37 CDT
- Tomb Raider 2 Soundtrack
You told me not to drive,
But I made it home alive,
You said that only proves that I'm insane.
-Billy Joel
Just took a long trip to Georgia to see my brother, then down to Florida to see a friend of mine down there. The Mercedes performed admirably, aside from a couple of small, easily repaired mechanical problems and a leak that kept flooding the floorboards when it rained. And did it ever rain. Rain-X is wonderful stuff. Anyway, I got to see the South, just about all of it there is. Ten days and three thousand miles later, here I am home again, well-exercised, in time to save a couple of babies and then get my wisdom teeth pulled. No good deed goes unpunished, while many bad ones escape notice.
Work 01 - 07/12/03 13:23:32 CDT
Front 242 - Front By Front
If it keeps on rainin levee's gonna break...
-Led Zeppelin
Ever had one of those moments when an unexpected confluence of events brought on a strange euphoria? No? Well, you're missing out. I got my first real consulting gig yesterday. There's a hurricane coming, and the sky is starting to look a little disturbed. I am sampling the latest batch of beer. The air conditioning in the Mercedes is finally working. My first load of inventory arrived yesterday. Maybe it's just the beer, but the excitement of actually having some real brain-work, the chance of some foul weather to enjoy, knowing that the last batch wasn't a waste of time, being able to drive while being blasted with cold air, and having a pile of computer parts to play in makes life a little more exciting.
bear, bear! - 06/26/03 12:03:17 CDT
REM - Document
Josh, My friend A____ is even more of a princess than I am, and wants to know if there are any hotels nearby. Think you can help her?
a mystery - 04/08/03 01:24:54 CDT
Autechre - Incunabula
This is unexpected...like squirt from aggressive grapefruit.
Charlie Chan
In the mail today was a Priority Mail box, and upon first seeing it, I thought it had been delivered to the wrong address. Then I realized it had actually been returned to me. I couldn't remember sending a box like that recently, though. Then I looked at the postmark - it was sent August 2, 2002, over eight months ago.This was pretty strange, and I had no idea what was in the box, other than it must have been something I sold on Ebay since I did not know the addressee. I took it back in the house and opened it (somewhat gingerly), and inside was a circuit board that I had sold and long since forgotten about. I'm sure I was paid for it, since I sent it - what happened to the buyer? He obviously never received it, yet I had had no further contact from him, much less any complaints.
I've been reading old Charlie Chan mysteries lately, so, being in a detective frame of mind, I examined the box which held my only clues to this mystery. Where had it been hiding for the last 8 months? There was a stamp from the post office above the crossed-out address: "CMDA REFUSED". The addressee's name was written in marker on the end of the box. A quick Google search revealed that CMDA stood for Commercial Mail Delivery Agency, and there were several businesses listed using the same there - so it's most likely a mailbox rental place. That's probably why the name was written on the box, to aid in sorting. I was unable to dig up anything about the address, but it seems likely that the buyer had rented a mail box, and then either cancelled it or stopped paying his rent. I tend toward the latter theory, since it would explain the eight-month limbo this package apparently endured before returning to its point of origin - the coffee table in my den. Well - mystery mostly solved, I guess. Sorry it wasn't any more exciting.
screaming temporal doom! - 03/05/03 16:32:58 CST
Front 242 - Tyranny >> For You <<
hell yeah
 |
YES! you are ZIM! As an elite Irken Invader your aim is to prepare Planet Earth for the approaching invasion armada by laying waste to the horrible... stink... people... things that inhabit it. You hate human affection, |
ice pirates - 02/25/03 21:45:07 CST
Romeo and Juliet - Soundtrack
Most of the United States north of Dallas will laugh at me even mentioning this, but we never have problems with ice here. I've lived in Austin six years, and the most white stuff I ever saw was a snow flurry a year or two ago. It just doesn't ever snow here. If it does, it melts really fast. Well...this is the worst weather I've seen in a while. There's at least an inch of ice on the ground, and the thermometer outside hasn't risen above 25 all day long.
Well, of course, bad weather comes and I want to sally forth into it, just to see how bad it really is. The Mustang is stranded downtown, since I picked Melanie up last night just before the storm started. Once we came out of Scholz's, and realized how bad it was getting, we left the poor Mustang to hibernate in the parking garage and drove home in the Mercedes. Today, Melanie had an important meeting, so I got the Mercedes started and uniced enough to see out of, and off we went.
People in Austin can't drive on ice. I've had some experience, luckily, but the ice doesn't scare me anywhere near as much as the idiots here that either pass me going 60 miles an hour, or the people creeping along at 5 mpg with their hazards flashing. I'm like, yes, we know there's a hazard, thank you. But there weren't a lot of people out, and it was kind of fun puttering along in the Mercedes with the diesel-powered heater on, and watching cars slide down hills and into the ditch. Melanie was a little frightened, but oh well, what price adventure.
fire burn, cauldron bubble - 02/11/03 11:00:16 CST
Machines Of Loving Grace -
In Himmel gibt es kein Bier.....
-the smart beer song in bad German
Seems like there is a real home-brew craze starting. Mel's ex-step-dad brewed really good beer, and I thought I would try and do it too, but before I got around to it suddenly everyone else is brewing beer!! I'm behind the curve as usual.
Oil 1 - 01/19/03 21:40:30 CST
the Police - Best Of
Total engine oil capacity....8.0 l/8.5 US quarts
- Mercedes 300D owner's manual
I just thought of a funny story, and I have nothing better to do at the moment so I'll tell it. I drove the Mercedes on its first long trip (Austin to Dallas) after the engine work. I had been driving it around town with no problems after 500 or so miles, so I confidently set off to Mother's house, packed around with Christmas presents. Nice day, nice drive, car is a pleasure, etc. After about an hour and a half, when I reached Waco, I started thinking about food, so I stopped at the first place I saw, which was a Sonic....how lucky this chain of events was, I had no idea until a few minutes later. I pushed the little button and ordered my hamburger, and sat there lolling my head on the headrest, listening to the engine...klatta klatta klatta klatta....and then I glanced down at the oil pressure gauge. Simple gauge, zero through three, should be on two when the engine's idling. Well, it wasn't on two. It was below two. This was enough out of the ordinary that I looked at it for a second or two longer, and I saw it drop a little. I began to worry. I turned off the car, and just then the cute little hamburger girl came with my burger (and she WAS cute, too, and gave me the eye, in my big blue Benz.....if she only knew about the little present I was leaving her) and I started the car again. The pressure gauge was heading south towards one at a good clip. I backed out of the parking spot and drove to one several yards away in front of a little strip mall, just to avoid the embarrassment of my car breaking down in the Sonic parking lot. By the time I got there the gauge was nearly at zero, and I killed the engine again. This was a very bad thing - engines don't just lose oil pressure. I got out to check the oil, hoping maybe the gauge was just on the fritz, but when I opened the hood and looked down I saw oil gurgling out on the ground below the engine. I stared down for a second, and then looked behind the car, and saw the trail of oil leading back to where I had been parked at Sonic. In the space I had just vacated was an enormous, spreading, Exxon Valdez pool of pitch-black diesel oil. It was running down the gutter, it was on the flowers, it was everywhere. I looked underneath the car, and the oil drain plug was missing. I looked at the pool again, half-expecting to see otters struggling in it, and saw another trail leading back the way I had come down the frontage road. So the plug had fallen out on the road, and was for my intents and purposes gone forever. No oil, no plug to hold the oil in.
disconnected - 01/19/03 20:11:08 CST
- Henry V Soundtrack
"We are proud to have been able to serve you."
-DirecTV Broadband letter
I'm without internet!! The server's down, I'm cut off from the outside world. I feel that guy in The Matrix when they sprang him from his tank and all his wires disconnected, with little popping sounds.
end - 12/16/02 17:31:14 CST
Live - The Distance to Here
Where you goin' now? What's your plan?
Live, "Where Fishes Go"
I have one exam left, and then it's all over. I'm going to walk out of that classroom, and never come back. Time for another major life change, isn't it. Time to wake up early and go to work, Monday through Friday. Time to start wearing nice clothes again, and stop carrying a bookbag around. Time to make money, instead of being a black hole in the income tax system. Time to return to what I once was, if I can remember how. It's going to be pretty strange.
context-free language - 11/05/02 13:44:54
CST
Course of Empire - Telepathic Last Words
Let p be the pumping length given in the pumping lemma.
-some damn theorem
big test coming up. after studying frantically for a week or two, one enters a state of (mostly caffeine-induced) euphoria, where the test doesn't really matter any more, as long as it's taken and done with. i assume this is the point where i actually know enough to pass. bring that $#@$#@! on!!!
dieseling! - 10/08/02 14:56:51 CDT
Depeche Mode - Violator
Melanie: "What do I do if I can't find diesel?"
Me: "Isn't that little star on the hood cool?"
I am the proud new owner of a Mercedes-Benz! I've wanted one ever since I knew Rick and his gray-market 190E 2.3-16. Mine is a 1985 300D diesel sedan, so I'm rather off the mark, but when I closed the driver's door and heard that unique thunk sound, I knew I'd returned to the world of fine German automobiles. (Also the first car with a turbocharger I've ever owned....cool huh?)
Now those of you who know me are asking yourselves two questions. The first
one is, "What's wrong with it?". Well, don't worry about what's wrong with it,
just glory in my new acquisition. The other question is, "What happened to
the Fiat? Nothing happened to the
Fiat, or the Mustang, for that matter. They're all sharing the garage, Italian,
German, and American, in the true spirit of globalization. Via, strasse, or
street, it will all fall to me no matter what I'm driving (or what's wrong with
it).
not too bright - 08/23/02 15:41:48 CDT
Leftfield - Rhythm and Stealth
The only thing worse than a stupid person is a stupid person who is proud of it.
- Mark Twain
I was reading about the school in Florida that's telling kids F = Fantastic. It seems like so many completely brainless actions get in the news lately that I don't even pay much attention anymore - I just assume that most people aren't that dumb. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but hopefully these Fantastic children won't be too screwed up and Darwin's Law will take care of the rest. That's the one problem with a safe and secure environment - organisms that normally would be stupid enough to get eaten (by a saber-toothed tiger, say, while they're out being Fantastic) grow up and breed. I'm not well read in philosophy and the dynamic forces of civilization, but it makes me wonder whether any civilization can survive forever, since the very act of making a safe environment produces softness and eventually weakness from all the losers who would otherwise never stand a chance. I'm probably unknowingly expounding some radical Nazi theory, but one does wonder.
turn that beat around
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder
I just reversed the order of entries here. Nice, huh. Now I'm gonna go to Dairy
Queen and get a blizzard.
work hard
New Order - Substance
You've got to work hard if you want anything at all.
- Depeche Mode, "Work Hard"
This is my last semester of school. I survived the summer, finished my last math class (seemingly more by luck than by anything I learned in it), and in the next few days I'm going to start flooding the market with my resume. It's not a very good time to be out looking for meaningful employment, especially here with a tide of laid-off tech workers flooding every available job.
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. The broadcasters in your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and state and local authorities are conducting this test to keep you advised in case of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency your ass would be grass already. This is only a test.
- anonymous
For years and years I've been meaning to fool around with Perl, and now I've finally done it. I patched together a script to update this page, and had an inordinate amount of fun doing it. I know I'm a nerd - it's ok, I've accepted it and by doing so I have left it behind me. You can't tell from looking at me on the street that I have pi memorized to 20 or so decimal places (3.14159265358979323846), that I know how to fix a broken laser printer, or that the computers on my network have names from Lord of the Rings. You just wouldn't know.....until I sneaked up behind you and BIT YOU ON THE ASS.
9.11.01
Fire, destruction, and death. Apprehension, doubt, and arguments. War.
The flow of life in the United States before and after the knife-edgeof September 11 is as different as white and black. We were a complacent, self-absorbed nation in the Nineties, riding the wave of the bull market and cheering for bread and circuses. Now it all seems superfluous. I couldn'tbelieve that CBS and NBC did not broadcast the president's speech so theycould show Survivor and Friends instead. The world we live in has changed - we do not have the luxury any longer of being shallow.
The saying I am most sick of hearing is "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Some said we should show our greatness by turning the other cheek, and that we should not hate. I completely reject being nice. If we are to remain a great nation, our hate must remain fresh and clear, so it may fuel the power of our response to those who would bring us down. Lance Morrow pointed out in Time that there is a reason for hate - it is a mechanism for self-preservation. We cannot love those who would destroy us. We must not take an eye for an eye. We must take their head and hands so that they may take no more eyes, or we will be in for an endless succession of black celebrations.
crash v2.0
I was coming home from school yesterday, on the motorcycle, when I saw a tractor-trailer
in front of a car in front of me start to change lanes, from the left-hand lane.
Then suddenly he swerved back and I saw a great cloud of blue smoke come up
from his tires as he locked the brakes. The trailer hopped up as if it had run
over something, and then I saw the rear of a car flip up into the air, and it
landed on its roof and slid.
The car in front of me disappeared - apparently not stopping, although at that
moment in the chaos i was much more concerned about cars behind me panicking
and running me down. I stopped by the concrete barrier, jumped off, got my helmet
off, and ran to the wrecked car, fully expecting to see squashed dead people.
The woman in the passenger side was wearing her seatbelt,and was hanging from
it, very much alive, holding herself up. I tried to open the door, but it was
jammed, so I stuck my head in the crooked window to see if there was a latch
i could get to on the inside. Another woman in the back started screaming at
me to take her baby, and she was trying to hand him to me through the space
between the roof and the seat, when two more guys ran up, wrenched open the
back door, and took him. Another man showed up with a pocketknife, and cut the
seatbelt holding the woman ,and I pulled her out through the window. The driver
was lying across the middle of the roof, but she seemed OK, and then some DPS
officers arrived, and the crisis was over. There was a sour smell in the air
from the crushedbattery.
Everyone wonders how they will react in a crisis, and I learned a great deal about myself and my nerves in that two or three minutes. The problem with a sudden emergency is that at first there is no data upon which to base a decision,so the first bits of information one sees often decide one's course of action throughout the rest of the situation. I saw the woman in the front - therefore my first instinct was to get the front door open. It never occurred to me to open the back (although, to my credit, I'm sure I would have thought of it in short order if no one else had). After about a minute had passed, and everyone but the driver had been extricated, I was quite calm, looking around the car for leaking gasoline and trying to turn off the ignition(although I couldn't reach it). My lack of time sense surprised me, as well. I saw the accident in slow motion, getting worse and worse as the hundreths of seconds ticked by. Then suddenly the emergency was over, and all that was left was to look at the wreck.
the grading script is down again
The most exhausting class I have ever had in my life is almost over. The worst thing is that this is the second time I've taken it. Nothing I learned the first time had any bearing. I'm actually glad I took it again,because it's an important class, and gaps in my knowledge that would otherwise go unfilled are nicely puttied over and sanded flat.
Something I think about often in the course of a semester is how lazy I must have been the semester before. Every semester I work harder than the last semester, and I say, Damn, I'm working hard. Then the next semester comes around and I realize that not only was I not putting forth my best effort, I was doing an amount of work about on par with watching Invader Zim. This is quite frightening - it makes me wonder if, in the now-distant past of my professional career, I was lazy. Did people go around and say, that Josh, he's a lazy ass, what a schmuck? Surely not...I remember getting a hell of a lot done. I did have the feeling for the first time (except in EE316) that, while I was not at my limit, I was being pushed pretty close to it. People may say those splay trees are easy to code, but I think it took six months off my life expectancy. None of it matters anyway, because the grading script is down again.
motorcycle madness
-on a T-shirt
I made a midnight trip from Dallas to Austin on the motorcycle.The bike's not very fast; it's only a 450, and if there's a stiff breeze I'm forced to put my feet on the rear pegs and get down on the tank to make what Melanie calls "cheating death" speed, which for the bike is about ninety. (I'm not sure if she means I'm trying to outrun death (cf.It, where Bill Denbrough runs to beat the devil), or rushing headlong into its bony clutches. No matter.) It's relaxing to be out of the wind,and when there was no one else on the road, the sky was like a great black bowl turned over my head, with little pinpricks of light. The headlight made a little semicircle on the asphalt, and it seemed sometimes that nothing was moving except the road unwinding beneath me, dark behind and ahead the dim spark of a distant tail-light leading me on towards home.
in the end everyone is even
"Standish looked quite sheepish and shuffled his feet...But he sanctimoniously replied that his generosity was a way to soothe his deep shame about his past. He said he would one day have to answer to his Maker, and that he wanted to depart the Earth knowing that he had fully atoned for his sins.The fool! Does he not realize that you find religion only when you're on death's door-step, when you beg for the Lord's forgiveness like a pathetic wretch? I cannot tell you how many times I've done that. Then I invariably recover and return to being a capital ass-hole." -The Onion
crash
Andrew, watching me wreck the Fiat in his rear-view mirror, 1994
Ok, visualize me on my bicycle, racing down Speedway (or speeding downSpeedway???) in high gear trying to make it to Latin. Got it? OK. My cap started to blow off, I grabbed for it, and the laws of physics were agains tme. In front of a couple of hundred screaming fans, I crashed, hard.
Now, I don't know why I get so lucky, but I slammed down on my belly and slid along for a little. When I stopped, I couldn't move for a moment,and I lay there, in the middle of the road, listening to people call out,"Is he all right?" I finally managed to slowly roll over on my back, and then sit up. Someone, God bless them, brought me the damned cap and someone got my bike, and asked me if I was OK, and I croaked,yes I was fine, and was my nose bleeding? It felt very large. I slowly got up, and got my breath back, and then thanked everyone, got back on the bike,and went weaving down the road to Jester and Latin.
The pain began to set in as I went dazedly up to class. I kept looking at the palms of my hands, which were perfectly fine (among my other talents,I apparently never plant my palms when falling off things) and wonderingwhat i had done to myself. I entered Latin class, and everyone stopped andlooked at me. I said,"Am I bleeding? I can't tell!" Someone said,"Oh my God!" and the professor said "What happened to you?".I said something about eating it on my bike, and he told me to go wash upbefore i got infected.
I got to the bathroom and finally saw myself. My nose was fine, but I had a bloody forehead from smacking it on the pavement, a scrape on my swollen upper lip (how that happened without touching my nose I'll never know) a good deal of road rash on my upper forearms, and skinned knuckles. (thatexplains the palms...apparently I go "Oh crap!" and clench my fists when falling off things.) The worst part was that I had torn that little flap of skin that connects the inside of one's upper lip to the gums- in retrospect, I must have come close to knocking my front teeth out.
Anyway, add to that a great swath of road grease down my front and Iwas not in very good shape. But the point of this whole thing is that I ought to have broken something, and the fact that I can wreck, at speed,and come out of it with minor cuts and bruises means I must not be getting old enough yet to worry about breaking a hip. Hooray for me!
rant: we all know conspiracies are dumb
-blink 182
blah blah blah blah.
corollary: Who gives a rat's ass anyway.
somebody set up us the bomb
blast from the past: http://www.kalpol.com/jjmode
Some of my old friends remember my old web site. Well,it's back. Remember, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
My schoolcareer, metaphorically
how old am I, anyway?
In class the other day, someone discovered how old I really am. This isn't that big of a deal to me, anymore-- I got over the spasms of turning 25, and now I just let time flow over me and go about my business. Everyone thought I was a lot younger than I was, which explains why everyone laughed at the directions I sent out to my apartment, in which I said to look for a black convertible in front of the building. This led to jokes, because, don't you know, what college student has a black convertible unless Daddy bought it for them? But now things are clear, and there won't be any more comments. If there are, I'll have to break some kneecaps. When you get as old as me, you know who to call to get stuff like that done.
A new year
rolls around, and I've bailed out of Samsung and gone back to school. Samsung was a good company
to work for, and in that thought lies my dissatisfaction--the very idea that my entire goal in
life was to find a good company, one where good wages, benefits, and 80 hours paid vacation
a year made me feel GOOD! The hell with it all, I said, (toddling off with my lunchbox in my
hand and directions pinned to my shirt so the bus driver wouldn't lose me.)
School is....
fun (at least for now). I feel (for the first time in a long time, and possibly never so
forcefully) that I am doing something worthwhile, and making something out of myself.
Stuffing new facts in my mind has gotmy creative juices, flowing again--the great rusty
machine in my head is creaking along, and hopefully practice, like oil, will smooth it out
and make a steadily pulsing engine. (heheheheh i just love cheese.)
Erasure, "She Won't Be Home"
It seems like more happens to me around Christmas than at any other time of the year. Summer always just goes by, with my birthday breaking the flow like a semicolon. Summer is hot, and limp, and lifeless. I always feel slightly drained in the summer. But once the heat breaks (and that's exactly what happens, here, it'll be 98 degrees until the first cold front hits, and then it won't get above 70 until next spring [Note: I must have been drunk when I wrote this, that is SO not what happens - cf. dart conversation with Angela, lessons learned!]) I feel much better, and the kind of day I like best are those cloudy, blustery days where it's not all that cold, but you know it's going to get that way pretty quick. I love snow, too. When it snows I always find an excuse to go driving in it. Lots of old memories crop up during this season, as well....some best forgotten, some best when remembered.
Last night saw the end of the Rx-7. The transmission went finally, quietly,even though the
car had been dropping pieces of exhaust system daily and vibrating ominously as if it were
promising a spectacular finale. Instead,nothing at all. The motor just suddenly revved up and
the car started slowing down. Et finis.
I felt a little sad, because the Rx-7 had served me
well for much longer than my mechanic promised, and delivered quite a few thrills. I also felt
like I do with all my cars when they explode, implode, catch fire, or just die quietly--I wonder
what it would say if it could talk. Would it tell me strange places it's been, people it's
seen, events it witnessed? Has it heard compromising rumours spoken only on the freeway?
Weigh that against the pure embarrassment of being seen in such a piece of crap, and getting
rained on, and the really bad gas mileage, and the stuff that kept falling off (here I must
apologize to that poor guy on 360 who encountered my catalytic converter in the middle of the
road) and waking up the neighborhood at 3 am, and I am relieved to see it go. I am sure
everyone else is, too.
As is happens, I've neglected all this crap for a long time,and so I went back and deleted most of the old writing.......time for fresh glurt! These aren't really in chronological order, although the newest ones tend to be at the top, and a year or two separates some of them. The really old ones are now dated.
